


Oh the Shark, it has such Teeth, Dear

by RedemptionByFire (steelneena)



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: 25 years later, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Het Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major character death - Freeform, Post canon, Rape, Season 3, Sitophilia, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Suit Porn, Violent, because coop is sooooo not driving the car, contains the mention of a past major character death, dubcon, suicide for altruistic reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:41:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9919235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/RedemptionByFire
Summary: Twenty Five years the FBI's been looking for the serial killer called 'Mack the Knife'.He kills, and kills and kills again.And then, just maybe, he'll be saved.Dale Cooper, 25 years later.A Dark Take on Season 3





	1. Shark Teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lynzee005](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/gifts).



> Happy Twin Peaks Day! For lynzee005, even though you didn't ask for it, I know you're happy I wrote it.
> 
> Suggested listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB6HY8r983c
> 
> Title from the song "Mack the Knife"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're on to him, but what they don't know is that he's on to them too...

The casino lights were harsh. Upbeat piano filled the open area. Ostentatious jewelry adorned the wrists, necks, fingers of the vapid women in black velvet and silver sequins who stalked the red carpeted floor. Smoke curled around gentleman in fine suits puffing on cubans. Chips clicked, dice tumbled, glasses clinked. Simpering smiles of clients passed between faux apologetic frowns on croupiers and dealers. Eyes twinkled, cheeks reddened, laughs echoed.

A woman in a slim, red dress blinked her eyes slowly. She was poised against a balcony railing. Surreptitiously, a finger pressed by her ear.

“Target spotted,”

“Copy that _Anna Sage_ ,”

“Clear to proceed on _the Knife_?”

“Clear,”

She moved to descend the spiraling staircase. Above her, light from the crystal chandelier flooded the room in a warm glow.

The target was ahead, lounging at a dice table. The agent quickly altered her course for the bar, keeping the target in her peripherals.

“Old Fashioned, on the rocks,”

The drink was promptly slid into her hand, and she redirected, target firmly in sight.

She recalled the profile perfectly. Six foot exact, sixty-two years old. Handsome, still. Dark Hair, almost black, peppered with silver. Perfect, trademark smile. Dark Hazel eyes.

She’d never been up close and personal with the target before, but she’d heard all the stories, going way back. The other agents had given him a gruesome nickname. _Mack the Knife_ , after the character in the song. It was certainly fitting, she thought. He’d slip away, time and time again, like a shadow in an alleyway, leaving behind death, drugs, and destruction in his wake.

As she approached him from behind, she heard a rich laugh. Her hand landed gently on his shoulder, and he swiveled in his seat to meet her gaze. He took her in, head to toe, languid, a dangerous gleam in his eyes, like hunger.

He took the proffered drink from her slender fingers.

“Hello, gorgeous,” The words dripped like honey as he drunk in her sultry look. He wore a black dress shirt under his black suitcoat, with only a deep maroon tie to accent the ensemble. She didn’t see any signs on a hidden gun, but knives… They were easier to hide and he hadn’t gained a reputation as _Mack the Knife_ , for nothing, though it was obvious that he was more than willing to use his bare hands. The victims they’d managed to find over the years were brutally murdered, left in the most depraved ways.

 _When_ he killed, he was ruthless, sadistic. She’d heard the word fall from more than one seasoned agent’s mouth: _evil._

She let one of her incisors bite at her blood red lower lip, twitching the corners of her mouth into a smile.

“I like a man who can win,” She slid her hand suggestively along the collar of his coat and allowed herself to be pulled into his lap. She perched tenuous there and _The Knife’s_ attention drifted back to his gambling. After a moment, a martini was brought to her by a server.

In her ear, a voice whispered.

“Asset in place. Eyes on target. Copy,”

She leaned into _the Knife_ , as he won a round, and bit at his ear, the prearranged ‘copy’ signal.

“Proceed as planned,” Whispered in her ear.

Three rounds later, _the Knife_ was another thousand richer and another glass was empty. She grabbed him by his tie, pulled herself in.

“How about we go to my room, Mr. Winner?”

His eyes narrowed at her, and a shadow flickered across his features. She fought the urge to shiver, using her training to maintain her composure.

 _This won’t be a comfortable job, Sage_.

_When are they ever?_

_Trust me on this one. He’s a killer and there’s no morality hiding behind that smile._

_Trust me, I’ve got this._

_No, you trust me, no one’s got this._

The fear he inspired, she could see it now. Understand it. So many unexplained deaths, vicious, like animal maulings. It had been so hard to tell. There were signs of premeditation in the MO, but the methods were inhuman. 

She tugged at the tie, pulling him after her, though it seemed he needed little encouragement. They were inside an elevator half before she knew it, and he had her up against the wall, attacking her neck with lips and teeth.

 _Savage_.

She clutched at his shoulders, gasping, allowing her fear to masquerade as arousal, releasing it into the void, grasping internally for composure. Something wasn’t…something was _off_ … They reached the room without incident, she half dragged him to keep up appearances. Once there, she turned him back against the door as it closed, and made like she’d turned the latch.

“We’re going to have _fun_ tonight,” She purred the code phrase, flaunting her bravado at him, projecting _harmless, and desire._ His smile suddenly grew as he walked her back towards the bed. _Manoeuvre,_ she reminded herself. _Set the trap._

“Oh, I don’t know about you…but _I_ certainly am,” His incisors shone in his unnaturally wide smile, and as she looked into his eyes, she could see that they were dead. There was nothing there. The hazel flecks held no spark of gold. Only emptiness and fire.

She’d reached her mark, and braced herself against the bedside table so she could reach the gun. Any moment and _the Knife_ would be cornered and her team would come through the door. Her fingers grasped metal and with practiced precision, she pulled the weapon from its holster.

She blinked and suddenly, the gun wasn’t in her hand.

Her team hadn’t come.

She felt the cool metal hit her temple with phenomenal force. Feeling at her ear, she found that the earpiece was gone. When he'd taken it, she couldn't pinpoint. In the elevator? She tried to rouse herself from the floor, blood pouring into her eyes. Casually, _the Knife_ flung her gun into far corner.

He was laughing. It was maniacal, and in her dazed state, she felt the fear flood her. Time and time again she’d seen the crime scene photos, studied them, worked with the lead profiler and forensics specialist to piece the scenes together into a cohesive narrative. Abruptly, his demeanor changed. The smile gone in a flash as he helped her to her feet, put a hand softly to her hair. She breathed in and- hands grasped like iron around her wrists as he manhandled her to the edge of the bed.

“You’re going to be just delicious, you know,” His eyes smoldered, scorching her. “All that fear. Just delicious. You were positively _seeping_ it downstairs, you know. I could smell it in your blood. That pulse…” His thumb caressed the skin over her wrist. “Just racing,” He hummed. “Delicious,”

 _Trust me, no one’s got this_.

She closed her eyes, resigning herself. She was the next crime scene.

“Oh that won’t do,” He tisked. “Can’t have you _giving up_ . That’s no fun,” His voice had deepened. “Don’t you want to have fun, _Agent?_ ” His weight settled, pressing down on her. “How about I tell you a little story?”

 _Let him talk,_ she reminded herself. _Buy time_.

“Let old Cooper here tell you a delightful little tale,” His tone was husky now. He’d leaned down, nosing at the throbbing pulse point of her neck. “A nice little story about me. I knew you were with the FBI when you brought me the drink,”

She winced in dual pain and surprise. His words were accented by pinprick pains as his fingernails dug into her skin.

“You walk the walk, Red. And I know that walk.”

A knee came up between her legs and she was pushed farther up the bed, still held firmly immobilized. His lips barely brushed her ear.

“I used to walk that walk, Red,”

An intake of breath escaped her.

“Bet you weren’t counting on that one,” He was looking down at her now, manic. There was a long, pregnant moment, the calm before the storm, when the only thing she could hear was his breathing and her own rapid heartbeat.

Without warning, a hand whipped across her face, and another clutched at her throat and when she opened her eyes, it wasn’t _the Knife_ staring back.

~

Agent Dwight Carson sighed gravely, running a hand across his beard as the footage played out again. She'd gone dark before they were ready and by the time they'd got there, it had been too late. The feed they'd set up in the room was good, but the audio had been knocked out. He'd had to watch the tape. In the end, his agent had fought back. He wasn’t sure if it made a difference. The man was an animal after all. But they’d caught his face on camera, and that was a step forward.

“We’ve got intel back, sir. There’s a match. You’re not going to believe this sir,”.

The subordinate handed over the folder, and Carson opened it without hesitation. The man in the photograph was younger, to be sure, but recognizable.

**COOPER, DALE BARTHOLOMEW**

**BORN: APRIL 19** **TH** **1954, PHILADELPHIA, PA**

**SPECIAL AGENT, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS.**

**STATUS: MIA**

He closed the folder, and dropped it on the table.

On the monitor, the security footage played on a loop. Punch after silent punch fell. Fabric tore silently. Soundless screams filled the air. The subordinate said nothing.

Carson hefted a deep sigh.

“Shit,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No the agent isn't Audrey. Props to anyone who gets the 1930's american gangsters reference. (Hint: it's not DB Cooper) If you message me with the answer you can send me a prompt for Twin Peaks and I'll fulfill it. Please I'm desperate.


	2. Pomegranate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometime after his encounter with the undercover agent, Dale Cooper returns to the scene of the crime...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Food based erotica betwixt a demonically possessed 62 year old former FBI agent turned underworld kingpin and a 42 year old brunette who’s just in it for the kinky sex.
> 
> This spawned from a discussion with Lynzee005 about how in "My Life My Tapes" Dale Cooper always describes food sensuously.

 

She lay naked on the black satin sheets, soft as petals. Sensuously, she slid her hands down her body till they rested, fingertips brushing the bluish imprints where he’d gripped her hips as he’d fucked into her, rough, harsh, unyielding. Viv brought her left hand up to her neck, where undoubtedly another hand print had formed, caressing the skin absently as she watched him dress, methodically.

He was doing up his cuff links when she spoke, allowing her eyes to devour him all the while.

“Leaving, Mr. Cooper?”

Her raven tresses melted away into the blackness of the sheets, her skin comparatively pale in the dichotomy. She stretched, slow and languid, catlike when his gaze turned on her. Like always it was both piercing and dead and she felt the embers flicker in her lower abdomen again.

So momentary she hardly saw it, Mr. Cooper licked his lower lip. The look on his cold face was austere, but his clothing was rich; a dark red dress shirt, a black vest, an off-white tie, held by a maroon inset pin, his hair as dark as the coffee he’d drunk at lunch. She watched his fingers nimbly fix the second cuff link, which Viv had toyed with during their shared dark chocolate mousse. The cufflinks were small, round and gold with an angular symbol etched crudely in the center. It was the only crude thing about his appearance, the rest of which was impeccable, never so much as a strand of his dark, slicked hair out of place.

Except when he fucked.

Viv blinked charcoal eyes. “Dale, aren’t you going to answer me?”

“Patience is a virtue,” It was a sharp dismissal, even from him. He walked purposefully away from the bed, and Vivian only allowed her eyes to follow him, watching the shape of him from behind as he crossed the breadth of the suite to the attached kitchenette.

He was almost certainly over sixty, she knew, though his appearance was initially deceptive. He was strong and handsome in a dark way, both in body and visage. At forty-two, Vivian didn’t much care about her partner’s ages, younger or older, so she hadn’t concerned herself with the thought when she first took him to bed. But that turn of phrase didn’t _quite_ describe the situation. It was most certainly _he_ who had taken _her._ It wasn’t an unwelcome change from her usual dominance in the bedroom, and she learned quickly after the first night a little over a week ago that, while he generally expected, if not enforced, her submission, attempting dominance wasn’t off the table. She recalled the words he’d growled in her ear on that memorable occasion, _I like ‘em with a little fight._

She spent several minutes like that, recalling the experience, letting her hand drift, mirroring her memory of his hands on her body.

When he returned from the kitchenette, Viv was biting her lip. Dale was holding a small white porcelain bowl in which a fruit rested, it’s reddish brown flesh just peaking over the lip. He sat down on the bed; her eyes watched the way the fabric of his pants moved with the curvature of his body. _God_ , she loved his ass.

Her pulse sped up when he reached into the little bowl. His hands were somewhere between soft and coarse, and his fingernails were blunted, with round white crescents at the tip. When he removed his hand, she could see the seed pinched between his forefinger and thumb. She opened her mouth, licking at the corner of her lip enticingly. In response, he brought the seed to her mouth. Viv closed her lips around both digits and bit down against him as she took the seed. After a moment, when his hazel eyes darkened several shades, she released him. The juice of the seed spread in a burst across her tongue like blood had more than once in the last hour.

“Pomegranate.” Viv’s lips curled into a smile.

He didn’t speak, but gave her another seed. After the sixth, he stopped, and oriented his gaze on the flat expanse of her abdomen. She took in a breath and held it. Methodically, he placed the cold, red seeds in a pattern on her stomach. From the angle where she lay, Vivian could identify the pattern as matching the odd symbol on his cuff links.

When he was done, he put the bowl on the nightstand and leaned over.  Mr. Cooper’s hot breath tickled at her before teeth nipped the flesh around the seed and the accompanying stab of pain came in the same moment that the cool touch of the seed on her skin was lost to the hot warmth of his mouth. He repeated the action for each pomegranate seed, hand coming to rest on her bare thigh for support, until each was gone.

Mr. Cooper straightened. His gaze was hard but his pupils were blown and Viv met his gaze evenly, arching a brow and opening her mouth invitingly. The next seed he gave her, she took between her teeth gently and held it there, resting on the precipice between sharp teeth and security. He studied her a moment, and then bent back down meeting his teeth to hers and together they bit the seed in half, violently. The seed gone, he bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and, in a rare moment of success, Viv managed to bite him back. The tang of his blood was curiously different from her own. She could taste it, a peculiar sensation, strong and bitter. Sharp, like the gleam in his eyes.

In a flurry of movement, harsh in contrast to his previously slow, calculated movements, he had removed the fruit from the bowl. He held it in his hands, all five sections pressed together in his hold. He clamoured onto the bed, and the mattress indented at the pressure from his knees. He straddled her hips, looked down, and, with the fruit held above her, squeezed. He drizzled the juice into her mouth and down between the valley of her breasts, allowed it to pool at the dip in her belly, and trickled between her thighs.

She gasped.

He moaned, more animal sounding than man.

The moist rind hit the wall with a thud, leaving a splatter of red on the wall to his left. He bent and lathed at her center, following the trail of juices back up her body, teeth grazing more often than not until he was at her lips, kissing her hard.

Rough hands grabbed her wrists and thrust them above her on the pillow where he held them secure, his body undulating against her. Viv could feel his breath as he bit at her ear and the pulse point in her neck. Then, voice ragged, dangerous, he whispered in her ear.

“The last time I fucked a woman in this room, in this bed, I killed her,”

He transferred both of her wrists to one of his hands, freeing the other to work at the closures on his trousers and she waited, senses heightened, in anticipation. Each time they’d been together, had been unpredictable. His words, when he actually spoke, were always violent, sadistic, malicious… She’d had lovers say such things before but with Dale Cooper, Vivian believed every word. If the way he fucked wasn’t enough indication of his sincerity, the look in his eyes alone would have convinced her.

And now he was a murderer.

When his fingers delved into her center, she found she didn’t really care.

Afterwards, when she was alone and sore and out from under the intensity of his gaze, then she would allow herself to make plans. She wouldn’t talk of course. Didn’t dare. Whoever he was, Dale Cooper was a big-time problem that she would be happy to leave behind. Maybe, after he left for his ‘meeting’, she’d pack her bags and take a flight to Paris. Vivian hadn’t been to Paris in a while.

Something told her that he wouldn’t follow her if she did.

But Vivian saved those thoughts for later. He’d pushed his slacks down just far enough to free himself, to enter her without hindrance and had done so without further prelude. This time, he kept his hand around her wrists, pressing her into the pillow and the mattress firm and unyielding. Single-mindedly, almost as if he were unaware of her presence beyond the points of connection, his hips canted. Unlike any of the other times (Eleven? Twelve? She’d lost track) he was nearly robotic. Previously he’d lost all control, become wild, liken to an untamed animal. With rhythmic accuracy he drove into her, again and again. She met his thrusts as far as she was able, trying to let her mind refocus on the act, and not the way his words left a trail like ice water down her spine.

_The last time I fucked a woman in this room, in this bed, I killed her._

Vivian was surprised when Mr. Cooper collapsed on top of her, dead weight, after his climax. He’d always rolled away immediately afterwards, all business, cleaning up and getting dressed. The weight of him pinned her firmly for several moments. They felt like an eternity. He’d released her wrists when he collapsed, so she moved her hands to his hair, running her fingers through the soft strands and then down across the black fabric that covered his shoulders, his back.

“Dale,”

His breathing was ragged by her ear, unnatural.

“Dale,”

Suddenly, as if a switch was flipped, he pushed himself up onto his forearms and rolled off of her, fixing his slacks, running his own fingers through his hair. A spot of red marred the perfect satin of his white tie. Pomegranate.

“I have to go,” He said, turning abruptly and grabbing his suit coat from where it was draped over a chair. The door shut behind him and Vivian was left still nude, covered in sweat and small beads of juice and their combined fluids.

For some minutes, she watched the door, wary. Then, standing, uncaring of the state she was in, Vivian grabbed the black silk robe that lay on the floor, thoughts rumbling like faraway thunder in her mind as she picked her way through the room, gathering lost articles of clothing, a stray earring and her purse.

She started the faucet in the shower and then found her phone, dialed the familiar number.

“Hello? Yes, I’d like to book a ticket to Paris…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://buddyberries.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/red-and-black-bedroom-ideas-and-get-inspired-to-decorete-your-Bedroom-with-smart-decor-14.jpg
> 
> Doppel!Coop's hotelroom for the win.


	3. Light At the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Shark circles his prey...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EXTREME WARNING: This one is very distrubing and extremely, gratuitously violent. Throughout. 
> 
> Okay, it’s totally a thing that Doppel!Coop never fully undresses for sex because I like suit porn too much, and it’s not about the romance, it’s about the fucking, because he’s literally a demonic entity with a poor, sweet, gentle (sex fiend) human locked up inside him somewhere.

_Stop no! What are you doing? Just give me my coffee and leave. Just leave, please, oh god, please. Don’t talk to me anymore, please. Please. Don’t sit do-_

“Do you mind if I sit?” She asked, dark hair that hung to just above her shoulders bouncing with her step. He smiled, let it spread across his face like the slow shadow of a cloud on a sunny day. “Not at all,” He peered exaggeratedly at her chest, where the nametag was pinned. “Kimberly,”

She laughed softly.

“You’re too much!”

“Dale,” He offered in return. “My name is Dale,”

“Dale,” She tasted his name in her mouth on _her tongue, that tongue, I’ll have it down your throat – nonononono stop, please just stop, why, why this, why now, please don’t – let it lick a long stripe up your – Oh dear god please, not again._ “I’ve never met anyone named Dale before,” There was a sparkle in her eye when she looked up at him coyly through long, dark lashes.

“You know, Kimberly, you remind me an awful lot of a young lady I used to know, oh twenty-five years back,”

“Yeah?” Her incisor caught her lip and she crossed her legs, pointedly.

“You betcha. Dark Hair, blue eyes. Sunny smile,” He picked up the cup, dark, black coffee still steaming. “Hmmm,” He took a deep breath. Took a sip. “Damn good coffee, Kimberly. Damn good. Coffee this good is hard to come by, especially these days when you can get any coffee you can imagine but, _Kimberly_ , you know, quality over quantity and all that. Do you make the coffee here, or is it your boss? Another waitress perhaps?”

“I made this batch, actually,” She blushed.

_Beautiful, going to make it spread down and down and down and she’ll be all flushed and hot, warm blood rising close and beating hard HARD and it’ll be so delectable against a nice, cool knife edge-I won’t let you, you can’t please I’ll try again I’ll kill myself I will I will, I’ll smash my head in I’ll walk in front of a car I’ll stab myself before you can-fuck her with the knife blade and listen to her pretty screams and I’ll feel sooo ALIVE and I’ll laugh and laugh and laugh while she cries and her eyes with be red like the blood on her thighs, I’ll have so much fun with her, and you’ll get to watch, front row seat, yes that sounds like FUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUN_

“Kimberly, do you happen to enjoy dancing?”

 

 

 

 

The bass in the club was so loud it reverberated in the patron’s chests. Kimberly followed Dale through the throng of people, struggling at times to keep him in sight. Twice he stopped for her and waited, impatient.

“Where are we going?!” She shouted to him over the unidentifiable beat, and the sound of a hundred other conversations running simultaneous to theirs. He didn’t respond, kept walking, a dangerous, tight-lipped smile growing at the corners of his mouth. Eventually the crowd lessened as they entered a seating area.

“Ah, Mr. Cooper. The usual spot?” A bouncer stepped aside allowing them to lite the three steps to a raised, roped off area. A waiter, the moment he spotted them, brought forth a bottle of wine, dark, a merlot, and set it on the table after pouring two generous glasses. Dale slid into the booth and held out a hand to Kimberly, who took it without hesitation, took one of the glasses and perched herself on his leg, leaning back into the angle of his arm and shoulder.

“Will there be anything else, Mr. Cooper?”

“Not now,” He dismissed the waiter, leaning forward an inch to grab his own glass, other hand gripping infinitesimally tighter at Kimberly’s waist as she laughed airily, letting her fingers trail up his white and black chevron tie. _Later, later when we’re in the back room and her nails are tracing red lines down your chest, later when the electricity has been injected into her veins and her head lolls back and she’s tracing the knife blade between her breasts of her own free will, that’s when, that’s when – no. no. I won’t let it I won’t. she won’t. she won’t do that. This…she’ll realize. And she’ll leave and you’ll have to try again and I won’t let it  I won’t I won’t I – will press her up against the wall by the throat and you’ll attack her mouth, and press and press and press till she’s blue lips against red, and then your hand will take her – stopitstopitstopitidon’twantthispleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease – and when you’re finally inside her, she’ll scream and it’ll be your name until it’s me she sees and then they won’t be pleasure they’ll be fear and pain and tasty, sweet goodness sweat and slick and rough-_

“God, you know, this is awesome. Really! We should, we should dance!” Kimberly’s wine glass was empty, and she was reaching to fill it again. “I haven’t had fun like this in…in-in ever!” She laughed, ecstatic, downed her second glass in a few more moments.

His eyes watched her intently.

“Let’s dance,” She stood, pulled him by the tie, swaying her hips, ankles wobbling on high heels.

After a moment he indulged her and stood, which endorsed another round of giggles. He put his glass down in a fluid movement and, taking her hand, walked back out onto the dance floor, amidst the innumerable people, gyrating, jumping, swaying.

_She even likes to dance, just like-don’t say her name. don’t mention her. Don’t don’t. She’s safe. She’s safe. She’s – going to sway those hips and your hands will grab at her there, slide to her waist, and down to that gorgeous, firm- SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHTUPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPNONONONO- petite just like-NO-AudreyAudreyAudreyAudreyAudreyAUDREYAUDREYAUDREYI’M GOING TO BURN HER GOING TO BURN AND BURN AND SCREAM AND YOU’LL LAUGH-_

Kimberly’s arms were around his neck loosely, her body growing closer and closer in proximity. She leaned in, towards his ear, standing just a bit on tip toes, still swaying with the music. “You’re kind of hot for an older guy, you know!” She half shouted, as if she were afraid he wouldn’t hear. He smiled in response but his eyes narrowed, something just to the right of desire hid there, sights set on devouring her.

She pressed her body to him and dropped her arms, allowing her hands to trace his shoulders, run down his chest, feel his pectorals behind the silk of the deep red shirt, fall, fingers curling into claws, down his sides. Slowly, Kimberly turned, still flush against him. Reaching behind her, she clasped her fingers atop his, brought them to rest on her hips so that their hands lay their together. In tandem, they swayed, breathing heavily in and out to the beat of the song.

With Kimberly’s hand still entwined in his own, Dale dragged his hand up the curvature of her body until, together, they clasped loosely at her neck, while the other roved downward to the tender, exposed flesh at the inside of her thigh.  

As her head fell back onto his shoulder, dark tendrils of hair splayed, he leaned in and bit at the lobe of her ear, just a hare more sharply than anyone else would have. She gasped audibly, and moved her hand from where it rest on top of his at her neck, to the back of his head, pressing him closer.

_She does want, does want you don’t you see? Yes…even now. You’re perfect for me, perfect for this. Exactly what I always needed. They want you so effortlessly. So desirable. She’ll be begging to – stop why I don’t, I’m not I don’t want I don’t, god I want to stop I want to stopiwanttostopnownownownownono – got you down her throat she’ll look up at you with those eyes and we’ll have such fun, oh yes ohhhhhh yessssssssssss-_

Kimberly had turned to face him once more, her arms thrown around his neck and her hips still snapping back and forth with the beat. She kissed him without thought, allowing their tongues to caress violently, allowing his hands to rest on her ass, gripping firmly, unyielding. Allowing them to gradually move closer to the hall.

With a crack her head hit the wall as they kissed; Kimberly hooked one ankle around his leg and he maneuvered her, half carrying, half walking, in a maddened, frenzied manner through the door into the bathroom. Only the deep, thrumming sound of the bass could be heard clearly in the bathroom, where the only noise was the slide of cloth and mouths and the huff of hitched breath.

Long nailed fingers worked expertly at the belt buckle, the button, the zipper. There was no ceremony in her movements, only utility. His slacks and boxers were pushed down only as far as was strictly necessary before Kimberly, on her knees, took him into her mouth.

_Feel that? Feel it? Feel that heat? Like…fire…Fire engulfing you, surrounding you, enveloping you completely. Feel it. Feel her tongue as it curls over…what’s the matter Coop? Not going to be talkative tonight? Too overwhelmed to drown it all out. Lost in the feeling of her mouth, and the pressure, the heat, the fire, coiling tight, deep-_

His elbows resting on the counter behind him, Dale pistoned his hips, as Kimberly worked her mouth around him, unflinching, making him hiss and then bark a shouting laugh when she licked him root to tip, tongue twirling at the head. Reaching forward, he pulled her up by a rough grip in her hair. In the momentary pause, Kimberly pushed the hair back from her face, licked the taste of him from her lips.

Dale’s hands came to rest on her hips, firmly, and he lifted her to sit on edge the counter top, rucking up her skirt and pushing aside the fabric of her underwear. The little gasp she let out when he entered her in one fluid thrust was lost to his lips as they met hers in the same instant, biting hard on her lip. A flinch of pain traveled through her body, and Dale chuckled darkly when she rested her forehead on his shoulder in response. His thrusts were even, controlled. He looked up, slowly and matched gazes with the reflection in the mirror.

Long, stringy, grey hair framed the face. It’s smile was wide, and showed each tooth, shark like. It threw back its head and cackled, demonic, the pace of the thrusts increasing moment by moment, heedless of the now obviously pained gasps coming from the girl as he fucked into her.

Had she have been at another angle, Kimberly would have seen a tear run down the cheek of the manically grinning Dale Cooper.

She would have seen the knife.

She might have lived.

  
  


 

 

She didn’t.

When the knife caught her in the clavicle, she shuddered in shock, the scream belated by several seconds from the sheer shock of it. Hysterically, she waver her hand back and forth, searching empty air for the handle of the blade, which stuck gruesomely out of the juncture between her shoulder and neck. Red rivulets ran across pale skin like rent flesh, flowing faster and faster as he continued thrusting into her at the brutal pace. Blood misted in the air, occasionally spurting from the wound around the blade. She moaned around the pain, unable to scream. He laughed. And laughed, and laughed. In the mirror, the face laughed back at him.

He reached around her and ripped the knife away, causing Kimberly to emit another shriek, which ended in a ragged gasp. His arm shook as he held the blood slick blade, hips stuttering, pace erratic and wild as he neared his end. Kimberly’s head lolled on his shoulder.

He shuddered his release and the knife came down again and pulled back out, this time nicking her carotid as it did so. Blood drenched them both as he slid from her, let her fall back, slack against the mirrored wall. She was still and quiet, barely whimpering mewling sounds like a wounded animal.

Behind her, in the mirror, was the reflection. Smiling and blood splattered and laughing, laughing, wild and taunting with demonic glee, knife held triumphantly.

The blade screamed downwards again, a blur of red and silver.

 

 

 

 

The face in the mirror flashed and contorted.  Dale could already see the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, a slow, tranquil movement. His fist was curled tightly around the handle of the knife where it was burrowed in his abdomen. He looked down at it, removedly, and let the grip loose, so he could see the blade where it penetrated. His eyes flickered back up and he saw Kimberly, her eyelids low as she breathed short stilted breaths, looking at him, the barest shadow of confusion falling across her face.

“I’m sorry,”

His voice shook. It was his own voice, and his own words. He gripped the handle once more, and slid the knife out. The noise it made was sickening, and the blood that seeped from between his lips was running freely.

“I’m sorry,”

Again the knife found it’s home in his side, and again he removed it before bringing it down a final time. A gasp escaped him as waves of pain cascaded over him, his vision darkening. Cooper fell to his knees with a thud, swayed there for a moment, and collapsed onto the white and black checked floor.

Kimberly, through half lidded eyes, watched as the blood pooled around his still form until her vision blacked and her pulse slowed, slowed, slowed...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Sorry, not sorry.


	4. Firestarter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bob comes out to play...

_“They didn’t let me in, you know_ ,” Albert told them during the off-books briefing held in the utmost secrecy in Gordon’s office . _“If you’d have let me go in in an official capacity then maybe-“_

_“COULDN’T RISK IT, ALBERT. YOU KNOW THAT.”_

_“Well goddamn it, he’s in isolation! They won’t let anyone in to see him who’s not on the case! So how’m I supposed to make a goddamn report on his goddamned condition if I can’t get in to see him?”_

_“Keep your voice down, Agent Rosenfield,”_

He’d grumbled in response, but acquiesced. _“Anyways, I wouldn’t be able to get him a drug cocktail even if I did make it in there. He’s locked up real tight, and for a reason at that. Have we had any luck with Carson yet? I thought you were going to reassign him, and put one of us in his place?”_

_“WORKING ON IT AS WE SPEAK, ALBERT. HE’S A TOUGH NUT TO CRACK.”_

_“Should I be getting back on the plane then, head out there? As long as he’s under lock and key, I’m worried he’ll end up like Leland Palmer…”_

_“You’re positive?”_

Albert had looked to Gordon in that moment, as if for confirmation, before continuing. _“We did manage a look at Carson’s files. His secretary’s not as fastidious as some. Turns out that we’ve been on Cooper’s trail for years. He’s the one they’ve been calling ‘Mack the Knife’. They found out it was Cooper after a stakeout went bad. The one where Katrina Masters was killed. They caught him on film red handed.”_

_“You’re joking,”_

_“UNFORTUNATELY NOT.”_

_“Fabulous. Well, what did you get out of the files?”_

_“Eighty-three total kills over the past twenty-five years, and that’s if you’re including Truman, rest his soul,”_ They all paused for a moment. Albert had cleared his throat after a while and continued.  “ _Anyways, Carson caught a tip from one that made it out alive. Some dame living in Paris now. She dropped the dime, said they’d been staying at the same casino and hotel where he’d killed a woman previously. Carson put two and two together and went for it,”_

_“How come we were never notified that they’d fingered Cooper as ‘Mack the Knife’?”_

_“THE BRASS THOUGHT I’D BE TOO CLOSE TO IT. DIDN’T WANT TO GET US INVOLVED.”_

_“Two weeks ago they caught him on camera again. Just enough to identify him, and come up with a radius of operation. Damn shame they were too late. Victim was dead by the time they got there. This next bit though, this is what’s got me worried. Forensics reports say that the stab wounds were self-inflicted,”_

_“That’s why you’re concerned about him pulling a Leland,”_

_“We can’t know for certain. Isolation will keep him from anything dangerous except himself of course. And if he were…any normal man, well, that would be enough,”_

_“But he’s not any normal man,”_

_“So what are we going to do about this? Gordon, you said you’re working on requisitioning the case… can we put someone else in in the meantime? Would they even let you?”_

_“I’VE STILL GOT SOME PULL DESPITE ALL THIS. IF WE’RE GOING TO SAVE COOPER, SOMEONE’S GOT TO GET IN THAT PRISON AND FIND OUT WHAT WE’RE DEALING WITH.”_

_“If they let him out of solitary…”_

_“We can’t let it come to that, Albert. What about Denise? Mack the Knife was notorious for drug trafficking. If they really have pinned him as Mack, then couldn’t she act on our behalf? Could she get one of us transferred onto the case?”_

_“ALREADY ON IT.”_

_“And who are we sending in?”_

_“YOU.”_

  

* * *

 

 

She stood, posture impeccable, while the security guard ran a wand over her figure. She kept a straight look on her face, concealing any and all inner turmoil.  Albert’s last words before she’d gotten on the plane kept floating back to her. He’d driven her in a Bureau car to the airport. She’d already removed her meager luggage and was facing the entryway with severe determination when he spoke, head craned out the car window.

 _“You sure you can handle this?”_ There was no small amount of concern in his voice. She turned her head to look back at him, a fierceness in her eyes as she did so.

_“I can handle it,”_

In the moment, she had felt sure. The posturing had done her wonders, thinking of all the things she’d done over the years, all the things she’d _handled_ in the past. There was nothing she couldn’t handle. She was _Special Agent Audrey Horne, Federal Bureau of Investigation_ and she was ready to face whatever came her way.

But, as another guard led her through to the checkpoint gate, Audrey couldn’t help but feel the turmoil boiling up within her. It all seemed so long ago, the events that precipitated Dale Cooper’s disappearance. Annie Blackburn’s institutionalization. His strange personality change, chalked up to the unnamed trauma he’d undergone the night of the pageant. Her own recovery and release from the hospital. A few short weeks of calm before the storm blew in, when Sheriff Truman was found dead and Dale Cooper disappeared entirely, as if he’d never been there at all. They never had been able to state conclusively the circumstances of Harry Truman’s death, never been able to identify Cooper as anything more than a suspect, considering his timely disappearance.

There had been a struggle. Truman was dead and Cooper…Cooper was vanished. She’d speculated, hoped against all hope that he’d been taken, by someone or something. Anything but the alternative. Anything but a broken mind lashing out and murdering, brutally, a man he’d once considered to be his friend. Her hope hadn’t held out long.

She followed the guard through the main hall of the prison inner, inmates hooting at her, calling out lewd things, making kissing noises with their lips. Audrey kept her features carefully schooled. The door to the solitary wing unlocked and she stepped across the threshold.

“You’re a brave lady, FBI,” The guard said to her quietly. “This guy’s a real piece of work. Screaming, saying weird shit, all hours. Hard to get anything out of him, that way,”

“I know,”

The guard only raised his eyebrows at her. “Don’t know why you’d need to talk to him anyways. That other agent, the guy, Carson? He said they already had all the evidence they needed to hold him here permanently,”

“Agent Carson doesn’t have all the facts…”

“Franklin,”

“He doesn’t have all the facts, Mr. Franklin. Now, if you’d please,”

“Whatever, lady,” Franklin rapped hard on the door. “Hey, Cooper, get your ass over here. Lady Fed wants to chit-chat,”

There was utter silence. Audrey felt the breath she was holding burn her lungs.

_Get in there, find out what we’re dealing with, and get out. Understood, Agent Horne?_

_Understood, Agent Rosenfield._

It started off low, almost indistinguishable from the casual hum of the lights. A chuckle, quick, manic, almost wheezing. Then, the voice. His voice.

“Come by to talk to Dale, did-ya?”

Audrey shivered and walked up to the steel door. Franklin stood to the side, back to the wall, waiting.

“Maybe,” She answered, voice hard and uncompromising.

“Hmm. You sound sweet. Like a _cherry,_ ” Though she swallowed hard, Audrey didn’t waver at the taunt and took a step closer. Through the slit in the door, she was sure he could see the shape of her legs. She could hear his breathing, heavy, labored. “Here to ask questions about dead girls and drugs?” He dangled it like a carrot on the a string. Audrey didn’t bite.

“Something tells me Dale’s not there to talk to. How about it, BOB? Wanna chit chat?” It was dangerous, the path she’d just started on. Tenuous, like teetering on the edge of the abyss. “Like old times. You and me and a gin lemonade,”

“Sweet, sweet, cherries and cream!” He cackled. The sound echoed. From the corner of her eye, Audrey saw Franklin flinch. “Audrey Horne! As Dale Cooper lives and breathes! Sweet little deer, come out to play with fire!”

“I don’t play. Tell me about Kimberly,”

“Ooooooooo. Hardball. Yeah, ha. Ha ha.  Kim-ber-leeeee!” All sound ceased, and then, three octaves deeper – “I made him watch. In the mirror. While we fucked her and stabbed her. Leland was good to me, but Dale….oh Dale… He’s such _fun_ to rile up. Especially when they look like _you._ He just _loooooooves_ that,”

“He loves it so much that he stabbed himself three times, is that it?”

BOB didn’t answer her question. “I like him so much, I think I’ll keep him around. Knew he’d just be tasty after what happened in Pittsburgh. He’s just like that – _mmmm –_ favourite dessert that you can’t get enough of. I’m simply addicted. Can’t get enough. No, no, no. We’re still having too much fun,”

In a split second, Audrey made her decision. She crouched down and peered through the slit. There was a gleam in the darkness, farther away than she’d prepared herself for, that could only be his eyes.

“Joyride’s over, BOB,” She didn’t blink. “You’ve had your fun. Now it’s my turn,”

Before she could even intake a breath, he’d moved, lightning fast, eyes wide and gleaming at her, the only part of him she could see.

“I'll catch you, yet, Audrey, dear. I’ll burn you, you’ll see,”

His eyes were shining white in the darkness, all trace of Dale Cooper invisible to her eye. Audrey reminded herself it was better that way.

“Catch me if you can,”

She stood, turned to Franklin, and over the deep, lingering echoes of half laughter, she spoke. “I’m done here,”.

“Just you wait, and see, Audrey Horne. Just you wait. Just you wait! Just you wait! JUST YOU WAIT!”

She didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So our undercover agent codename Anna Sage gets a real name in this chapter: Katrina Masters...which is a MLMT reference to Dale's academy friend, Robin Masters. Take that as you will but I did it on purpose.
> 
> Any "Silence of the Lambs" esque moments are completely unintentional. @Lynzee005 told me I was channeling it, but I've never seen it, so consider it a happy accident if you feel that way.


	5. Eager for Fun, Everybody Run

“ _Oh, the shark, it has such teeth, dear._ _And it shows them pearly white. Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, dear, but he keeps it, out of sight…_ ”

“WOULD YOU FUCKING SHUT IT?” The inmate banged loudly on the shared wall. The other prisoner, Cooper something, was driving him insane, which was quite a feat for the usually even tempered Guy MacFarlan, also known as Jenga, who was in for aggravated assault (it was _one_ time!). Cooper had been brought in, as he understood it from word in the yard, on two counts of murder, drug dealing and illegal gambling, but, supposedly, was accused of eighty one other murder counts. Suspected but unproven. The guy had to be in his sixties, but in prison age didn’t mean a damn thing. Reputation and actual ability were what counted. And if word around the yard could be trusted, Cooper had banged a twenty something chick in a nightclub before he stabbed her to death. After that things got fuzzy. Some said he stabbed himself afterwards, and others said it was the chick before she kicked it. Either way, Cooper’s reputation was already more than alive and kicking. But the last rumour…the last rumour was the one that had the others happy he was locked in solitary. And with each passing moment, Jenga was coming to believe it was less rumour and more truth.

The sixty something Cooper was the kingpin known as Mack the Knife. He was notorious for being a shadow. Players knew his name, but not his face, knew his money, knew his style, but had never met him. The hallmarks of his deals were enough to convince even the most hardened dealer that the job was his. No one was dumb enough to fake a meet, considering that they all knew what happened if you fucked with The Knife.

He'd fuck you back. Literally.

And now here the bastard was, safely behind four inch thick steel walls, blaring out the lyrics to the old moritat like a broken fucking record.

“…scarlet billows start to spread. Fancy gloves, oh, wears old MacHeath, babe, So there's never, never a trace of red…”

“HEY SHARKY I SAID SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH, SOME OF US ARE TRYIN’ TO GET SOME FUCKING SHUTEYE!”

“NOW ON THE SIDEWALK, HUH, WHOOO SUNNY MORNING, UH HUH, LIES A BODY, JUST _OOOOZING_ LIFE!”

A loud bang interrupted the song, and set Jenga to pause before he yelled back.

The voice of the guard filtered into his room. “YOU HAD BOTH BETTER SHUT THE FUCK UP, OR I’LL KEEP YOU HERE INDEFINITELY,”

Five minutes of blissful silence later, when Jenga had just started to drift off, there was a thunk against the wall. And then another thunk. Louder. Then, with speedy repetition, again and again this time with a sound that was something akin to laugher dissolving into pain.

There was a clamour of guards out in the hall, and the squeak of a door opening. Jenga moved to the door, crouching, to look through the vents. Bloodied and fading into delirium, the guards dragged the Knife out of his cell.

“Fucking nutzo bastard,” Jenga mumbled, before breathing out a sigh of relief.

Peace at last.

 

* * *

 

“Hey Jenga, word’s out that you met that highroller when you was up in solitary,”

“The fucking psycho, yeah. He was gonna make it so I didn’t get any sleep till he started smashing himself silly against the wall. Crazy bastard,”

“What’s he look like?”

“Gotta be over sixty. Dark hair, graying at the temples. He had those killer eyes, man. You know, like Renowitz,”

The other inmate, Tenner, whistled, and leaned back. “No shit. That crazy, huh?”

“Bastard was singing showtunes. Guess they don’t call him Mack the Knife for nothing,”

“Well good fucking luck, Jenga, cause I heard the let him out of the infirmary today and that he’s gonna be in gen pop,”

“They’re letting that whacked out sonovabitch into gen pop?”

Tenner only raised a brow. “I just tell it like I hear it, like it is,”

“Aha,” Jenga shook his head. “Sure,”

Tenner leaned back, whistled, and pointed. “Shit, man, if that’s him, I’d be getting moving if I were you,”

Jenga turned. As he did so, a fist connected with the side of his face.

“Fuck!” he spat out a gob of blood, followed by a shard of tooth. Jenga looked up into the eyes of a man less sane than any he’d seen before. They were dark and wild. He had stitches in his head, from the damage he’d done to himself the night before, and a grin on his face. “Hey, Sharkey, man I didn’t mean anything by it, I fucking swear man, I-“

Another punch landed, hard. This time an upper cut.

“ _And someone's sneakin' 'round the corner…!”_ The Knife sang.

A third punch. A laugh.

“ _Could that someone be…Mack the Knife?”_ More laughter.

A knee in his stomach. Jenga hit the ground. He could hear the inmates yelling.

“ _There's a tugboat, HOO, HOO, HOO, down by the river don'tcha know! Where a cement bag's just a'droppin' on down!”_

A kick to the stomach. To the head. Guards were shouting, a gunshot went off.

_Oh, that cement is for, oh! Just for the weight, dear, Five'll get ya ten old Macky's-“_

_“BACK.”_

Kick.

_“IN.”_

Kick.

_“TOWN.”_

“Oh shit! Oh shit!” Tenner was yelling. A group of the inmates was clustered around the fight. Jenga was out - that much was certain. Then the guns started going off regularly.

“EVERYBODY DOWN!” Guards were yelling, their guns in the air. They made their way to the fight, ready to break up the altercation, but, as Tenner looked up from his position on the ground, he saw the figure sprinting across the yard. “HE’S THERE, TAKE HIM DOWN!”

Shots were fired at the fleeing inmate, but they all missed their mark, because Cooper’s figure was growing smaller. The inmates who had been in the area had all dropped, prone to the ground as per the guards orders, but Tenner lifted his head and watched as the thirty and forty something year old guards sprinted after a man who was certainly pushing sixty and outpacing them by far. They were in view of the gate beyond the chain link fence.

“Holy fuck, crazy goddamned bastard!” Tenner yelled, and more inmates raised their heads enough to watch as Cooper scrambled for fence, making an attempt to vault over it, apparently ready to utterly disregard the barbed wire loops that decorated the metal structure.

More shots rang out. He didn’t make it over. A bullet hit his shoulder, causing him to lose his grip on the fence and plummet to the ground. The guards, more than ready to do their jobs, rushed him rolling him over onto his stomach and forcing his hands behind his back.

He growled at them, low, deep, menacing, but one guard took the butt of his weapon and brought it down hard in the center of Cooper’s back, the force of the blow punching the fight and breath from his body before cuffing his wrists and hoisting him to his feet. Alarms still blaring, they escorted him away.

It was a scene that Tenner would never forget. Jenga, on the other hand, was out cold, and had missed the whole thing. Snickering as the yard went back to normal and the inmates began to stand and brush themselves off, Tenner stooped to pick up Jenga’s tooth.

“Hmm. Nice souvenir,” He rubbed it against his jumpsuit and walked away, leaving the other guards to deal with the unconscious prisoner lying in the dust and bleeding on the ground.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What I know about the prison system is literally everything from Prison Break season one. sorry.


	6. The Return

“You’re Agent Horne?” Asked the Warden, looking Audrey up and down, as if unsure that she was truly the person she claimed. Warden Benson was a rotund fellow, balding with small eyes and a red face. Audrey raised a finely chiseled brow in response to his less than considerate appraisal. “I was expecting a man, to be honest. No offense. They told me there was a man on the case,” His tone, Audrey felt, left a lot to be desired. After years with the FBI - a boys club if ever there was one - she’d not only gotten used to it, but also gotten out of the habit of being used to it. Long ago, the men she worked with had learned that Audrey could and would hold her own. 

“Special Agent Audrey Horne. Yes,” She stated coolly. “There was a male agent on the case, but he’s wrapping up business elsewhere. I have a particular familiarity with the prisoner in question, which makes me uniquely able to  _ handle _ him,” She paused, leveling her gaze. “I was here yesterday, actually, to speak with Mr. Cooper. You were, of course, made aware? ”

He grumbled under his breath briefly, Audrey only catching the hints of words here or there that sounded like ‘man’s job’ and ‘don’t belong’. But he offered her a seat across from him at his desk. “What can I do for you Agent Horne?” His tone was brusque at best. Audrey didn’t have time to waste dealing with him, and cut to the chase.

“You can explain to me how Dale Cooper ended up in gen pop when it was the opinion of the Judge that he be remanded to isolation for the duration of his stay here for the safety of inmates and prison employees alike,”

“Late Friday night there was an incident in Isolation that ended in what seemed to be a suicide attempt on Cooper’s part,” Benson tried to steer her away from the actual matter at hand. Audrey stifled her desire to let out a puff of impatient air. 

“Yes, we anticipated that. It’s why we’ve been trying to gain federal custody. I want to know about what happened after that,”

“Well they took him to med ward and the next day he ended up in Gen Pop,” The Warden sounded a bit defensive, but Audrey could tell he wasn’t happy either. She figured that most of it stemmed from his prerogative to protect his employees, but his response angered her all the same. “We’re investigating how it happened, I assure you, but it wasn’t deliberate,”

“I’m sure not,” She granted with a tilt of her head. “All the same Warden Benson, this is unacceptable. You have two inmates in the med ward as a result. This needn’t have happened,”

“Well it did,” He didn’t offer an apology. He folded his hands, overtly polite in a manner inherently understood to be false.  “What can I do for you Agent Horne?” 

Audrey slid a folded paper onto the table. “Dale Cooper has been remanded into Federal Custody. My partner, an Agent with a medical degree, is currently arranging his care en-transport. We’ll be taking him today. At first opportunity,” Her tone brooked no room for argument and a flush of colour rose over Warden Benson’s face. 

“Ms. Horne,” He began. Audrey’s back straightened perceptibly, a hard glint in her eye. “ _ Agent _ Horne, we can do our jobs here. This is unprecedented! You can’t truly expect that-”

“I can. The petition for extradition has been approved by the court. Among those he’s murdered is a federal agent and that expedited their decision. You understand of course,” She said, and watched as his body language changed, undoubtedly thinking about his own men. 

“A cop killer?” Benson sounded on edge, like he was coming around.

“Among other things,” 

“Well,” He leaned back in the chair, fingering the sheet of paper. “You say you’re familiar with this guy?”

“Yes,” She offered no further explanation, letting him think what he would of the circumstance. 

“Damn,” Benson shook his head, and Audrey could sense his opinion of her shifting. “No matter how long I’m here, I never seem to get used to the crazier ones,” Please with the trajectory of his words, Audrey refrained from speaking. “Well, I can’t disregard the decision of the courts. But I don’t take violence in my prison lightly. I’d like to have handled this myself,”

“Frankly, Warden, I doubt you could,” When he began to bluster at her words, she quickly continued. “He should never have been sent into this prison in the first place. With the particular nature of his crimes, he should have been in a mental care facility equipped to handle him. It was unsafe from the get go and I assure you I fought against it the whole way. I had only the safety of your staff in mind,”

“My people will be safer with him in your hands,” He said it like a statement, but there was a question hidden there, and the Warden was obviously hoping for confirmation. 

“Safe as houses,” Audrey replied, cryptic. 

“And you say you’ve got a man with you prepping for medical care,”

“Yes, and if it’s possible, I’d really like for him to be allowed into Med Bay to oversee Cooper’s transfer care. It would be...safer that way, for all involved, including the prisoner,” Audrey kept her words cool and even. Discussing Dale in such clinical terms had never come easy to her, but the fact remained that it wouldn’t be safe for anybody if she treated him like anything other than what he was.

“We’ll bring him on in then,” Benson said, clapping his meeting palms to the table and standing. “Is he waiting here?” She replied in the affirmative as he picked up a two way radio and called in his permission for Albert to meet them in the Med center. She stood when he was done, and Benson held the door open for her, suddenly accommodating. “After you, ma’am,”

“Thank you,” She smiled, demur, narrowing her eyes as she exited in front of him, certain he was staring at her from behind. She didn’t need to look to know that he was. 

Along the way the Warden spoke of many things, from the attributes of his facility, to the weather, to his desire to take a trip to the Bahamas, to his ex-wife. Audrey nodded at variable frequencies, tuning him out except for the occasional directions he gave to turn here or there, being sure to remain just far enough out of reach of the hand that Benson frequently let wander towards the small of her back, as if to guide her. Much to her extreme satisfaction, his fingertips didn’t manage to graze the fabric of her suit coat even once.

Men still fawned over her. It was an inevitable part of her life, and something that Audrey dreaded as equally as she was thankful for it. Allure was a powerful weapon in her arsenal, and even at the young age which she’d met Cooper, Audrey Horne was already more than capable of using it. 

In the end, the only man that it hadn’t seemed to work on was the only one she’d ever really desired. And before she’d ever really had a shot, he was lost, not only to her, but to the world. 

She recalled the discussion she’d shared with Albert over the phone two days previously, when she’d called him to let him know he ought to be ready to fly out. 

_ “Are you sure you want to be there, Audrey? When I shoot him full of that haloperidol, he’s going to come back to us, somehow, in some way, whatever that ends up being. But this won’t be over. Not by a long shot,” _

_ “I’m going to be there Albert. I know you don’t have a choice in the matter, but if you did, wouldn’t you want to be there too?”  _ It went unspoken between them the high regard which they both felt for Cooper. Albert, after getting to know Audrey, had initially been overly protective of Cooper’s ‘memory’. Audrey had seen the true cause almost immediately, and somehow they’d come to bond over it. But while Albert had moved on eventually, Audrey never had managed to. 

_ “Goddamn it, I’m going to be with him every step of the way,”  _ He’d shouted over the phone, indignant. 

_ “Then why are you even asking me if I want to? You know I would give anything-”  _ Her voice had broken, much to her annoyance, and she’d felt the hot sting of tears at the corners of her eyes. She’d clenched her jaw in response, and blinked them away, hardening herself against the prospect. 

Albert, also silent, and perhaps in tears himself, on the other side of the line had only responded briefly after a few moment of silence.  _ “I know,” _ .

_ “Whatever we deal with when he come out of it, we deal with together,” _

_ “Agreed,” _

Catching sight of Albert waiting for them at the door brought Audrey out of her reverie. Benson was still blabbering and Albert had to cough to remind the man of his presence. 

“Special Agent Albert Rosenfield. I’m here to take care of his medical care en route,”

“Right, of course,” Benson shook his hand. “I’ll leave you both to it,”. 

Thankful that he hadn’t tried to make another pass at her, perhaps one last hint about his ex-wife, Audrey sidled up to Albert. 

“The worst part’s over,” She joked. “Benson’s gone away. I’d like to see him try and give me shit for being a woman on the shooting range. Then he might not have tried to be so handsy,”. Albert saw her attempt for what it was. He opened his mouth to speak, but Audrey put up a hand. “Don’t. I can do this. I have to. And I’m not letting you go through this alone either,”.

Albert nodded once, firmly. “I’ve got the haloperidol cocktail here, just the right dosage for what we’re looking for. I’m still debating the sedative…”

“Half dose? Have him come to elsewhere? Somewhere secure, where we can keep him calm, and where we can speak openly?” She suggested. 

“That was my thought,”

“Then let’s get it over with,”

They both entered the med wing, and were immediately confronted by one of the staff there. Albert took up the discussion, leaving Audrey to her thoughts. She scanned the rooms through the hall windows. Everything in the med wing was white and sterile, but definitely old, though still of decent quality. A variety of staff were visible, hovering in rooms or haunting the halls. They seemed distant from their setting, as if only the requisite amount of attention went into the routine of their jobs, and the care in their eyes was far from compassionate. 

Albert was still conversing with the doctor next to her when she caught a glimpse of him. The eyes she’d seen through the door the day prior were hardly as distressing as the shock of dark hair against the white pillow. Eyes closed, and through the window at that particular angle, it was difficult to discern his features but all the same, it was undoubtedly Dale Cooper. He was bound to the bed, Audrey could see, arms and legs, but was resting quietly. His shoulder was heavily bandaged, the white corner of the gauze peeking from beneath the blue of the hospital garment he wore. He looked pale, though not gaunt, like she’d somehow expected. 

The very sight of him, half obscured and distorted through the glass, was enough to take her breath away. 

“Agent Horne?” Albert’s voice rose in her ears, and she got the feeling that it wasn’t the first time he’d said her name. “We’re ready to go here,”

She walked without conscious effort, following Albert into the room. Up close, she could tell that Dale wasn’t as pale as she’d imagined, but that he’d gained some wrinkles. The age in his face was jarring, but offset by the peace of his sleeping form. His hair fell soft across the pillow and she itched to touch it, brush it back into order. 

Her heart ached. 

In a quick, businesslike fashion, Albert emptied the syringe that he’d brought, specially prepared, into the IV and ordered the nurses around, preparing him for transit. 

The time spent in the med wing until they had him in the ambulance was a blur. Audrey followed, running on autopilot. When she realized that she already had their rental in drive, she jerked out of the trance in just enough time to come to a gentle halt behind the ambulance, which was waiting for the gate to be opened. Her heart was pounding.

They drove to the prearranged location where they met another ambulance and, expediently, he was transferred into it, still under the lull of the sedatives. Once the other ambulance was down the road, the driver and passenger of the new one got out. 

It had been a long time since Audrey had seen either Big Ed Hurley or Deputy Andy Brennan, but she recognized both men instantly. Albert was already speaking with both of them. The back doors of the ambulance were still open and Audrey could see Big Ed and Albert gesturing. Andy sidestepped to make room and stumbled over his own feet. 

Some things never changed. 

Audrey opened the door of the rental, finally mentally composed and joined the group. 

“Hi Big Ed, Andy,” She said softly, suddenly feeling shy. “Been a long time,”

“Well, I’ll be! Audrey Horne! Albert didn’t say you’d be here,” Ed was smiling, but his eyes were serious. A sombre mood hung over the small reunion, think as the bright, grey clouds that obscured the sky. It was fitting weather for the happenings of the day. 

It was agreed quickly that Audrey and Albert would ride in the ambulance, with Ed once again driving, while Andy would follow in the car. Minutes later Audrey had climbed into the back and they were off again, moving quickly up the interstate. 

“The last time I was in the back of an ambulance, it was me on the stretcher heading to the hospital,” She said. Albert nodded, and from the front, Ed’s voice could be heard. 

“The bank explosion, right?” He asked. “Why the hell were you there again?” There was a hint of teasing in his tone, and Audrey felt a small smile grow across her face. 

“Civil disobedience,” She stated with utter conviction. Miraculously, they all laughed, genuine laughs before silence fell over them again. 

Audrey looked at Albert. He was staring down at his hands where they hung clasped between his knees, a furrow in his brow and a frown on his lips. By Audrey’s estimation only five minutes had passed in the vehicle before she could no longer bear it and turned her gaze on the figure lying immobile before her. 

Dale Cooper.

She bit her lip and looked away

The wait began. 

* * *

In the dark of the ambulance, the only light came from the back windows, spilling onto the prone form on the stretcher. When Dale woke, it was silently, the only hint the quickening in his breath, a flutter of his eyelids. Neither Audrey nor Albert noticed at first. He was positioned just high enough where he lay to see out of the window. As they rounded a curve, a spectacular line of green blurred across his vision. Instinctively, Dale knew where he was, where they were headed. He felt the weight of twenty-five years bear down on him, pressing like a physical force on his person, stifling him. He breathed in a bit more sharply, and focused on the trees, incapable of dealing mentally with the rest. He shut it out and watching in sad wonder and the beauty of the country around him. He could almost feel the cool, dry air around him, saturating his lungs, as though the air within them had been stale and he was only now able to take in a fresh breath. 

Tears were running freely, opening down his cheeks when Albert finally noticed that Dale was awake. His eyes were wide and glossy from the tears. Strangely, in that moment Albert was reminded of the eyes of a child. He nudged Audrey, who started briefly before looking over to Dale in his wide-eyed, emotive silence. 

“Coop?” Albert asked, quiet and tentative. “Coop, can you hear me? You can nod, that’s enough. Just nod if you’re hearing me,”

Cooper’s gaze remained riveted out the window. 

“Coop?” Albert prodded again. 

Then, voice trembling, infinitely quiet and soft, and eyes still streaming, Dale spoke. 

“The trees are so beautiful,” 

Audrey’s lower lip trembled at the utterance. It  _ was _ Agent Cooper. It was  _ her _ Special Agent. It was really, truly him. 

“Dale, do you know where you are?” Albert asked, hoping to get something else out of him. 

“The trees are so beautiful,” he repeated in that earnest way, so like a child that Audrey felt her own tears brewing at the corner of her eye. “So beautiful,” It was clear to both that he was distant, that his mind had already begun to protect itself, to shut off everything but the bearable thoughts and inputs.

“I’m going to give you a support dose of haloperidol, okay Coop?” Albert asked, moving very slowly, afraid he’d spook like a wild horse. “And then I’ll undo your restraints,”

Dale said nothing. Audrey, too, remained quiet as Albert moved towards their friend. He depressed the syringe into Dale’s IV and then crouched by his side. Tenderly, he removed the restraints, careful of physical contact. Even without the straps over his pale wrists, Dale barely moved. Albert returned to his seat, gazing at Dale intently, a matching statue to Audrey’s immobility. She watched him like a hawk. His eyes, still focused on the trees out the small  window, were deep and sad and almost entreating, and she felt the emotion contained within them strike her heart like a knife. He appeared like a caged animal, harmless, desperate to feel freedom again. 

“Hey Ed,” Audrey called softly to the front. “Can you open the windows? I think Agent Cooper might like to smell that fresh pine air,” As she spoke, she noticed Dale’s eyes flicker towards her, and then away, flinching slightly as if he’d been burned. She tried not to let it hurt, to focus on his needs and not her own emotions. 

“Sure thing, Audrey,” Ed called back. A gust a pine met their nostrils. A clean, honest smell. Earthy and crisp. The rest of the ride was silent and uncomfortable, the hours lengthening as each minute passed as if time was going backwards as they drew nearer and nearer to Twin Peaks.


	7. Duality of Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Penultimate Chapter...

When Ed finally pulled to a stop just outside of town, Albert stood up, hunched a bit, and spoke to Cooper, trying to hold his gaze. “Coop, We’re here. I’m going to-”

“I don’t need help Albert,” Both Agents looked at him with surprise. After the display half an hour before, they’d expected him to be in essentially the same state indefinitely. 

“Cooper?”

“I don’t need help, Albert,” He said again, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the stretcher. “I can do this for myself,” His eyes were still blank, empty as though there was no real thought behind them, nothing filling his mind. His gaze, usually so sharp with intelligence and his absolute engagement in everything that was happening in life, held none of it’s usual spark. Even the desolate and enduring sadness that had been reflected in them during the drive was gone. He was still distant, but in some ways, it was worse than before. 

Ed opened the doors and Albert hopped out. Dale, slow but steady, followed, and then, last, came Audrey. She watched Dale closely as he descended, but was careful to stay out of his space. It had become clear to her that he was uncomfortable, as a general thing, but especially with her. He hadn’t once acknowledged her beyond the flinch when their eyes met and her stomach was low, and uneasy, roiling as she watched even just the back of his head. 

Audrey hopped down and they walked around the ambulance as a group towards the cabin. 

“Where are we?” Dale asked, still just as quiet and subdued as before, and sounding less than interested. 

“This is Hawk’s place. His wife is visiting family and he’s on the clock right now. He’ll be back later,” Ed replied. It was far more information than Dale was apparently interested in, because he barely appeared to have heard a single word. He was standing stock still, his head cocked slightly, gaze out of focus on a point in the distance, as though he were far, far away from his body’s present location. They all stood still for a moment, waiting in awkward silence. When Dale didn’t return from wherever it was that he’d gone, Albert coughed. Still nothing.

“Hawk’s place, Coop,” Albert repeated. 

Cooper jolted momentarily. The movement was less that a split second long, like he was waking from a dream of falling. He didn’t turn to face them. 

“Oh,” He said. 

Once inside the house, Ed led Dale to a guest room, sensing the rising tension,which left Audrey alone with Albert for the first time in over a week. Albert was pacing, a slow, studied stride full of whirling thoughts. Audrey had seen him like this many a time before, anxious and blustery and full of misplaced emotions. She wanted to smile at him, but couldn’t find it in her to do so. She felt too much those same feeling, boiling like hot tea, and threatening to spill over. 

“Maybe you should call Gordon?” Audrey said, but when Albert looked at her with the same look she’d intended to give him, she paused. 

“I’m not about to call Gordon now. You and I both are on edge. I’m...well hell neither of us knew what to expect but instead of being hot and cold like I figured we’d be safe to anticipate, he’s just cold instead. It’s like someone hit the power button on an old commodore and the boot up is taking forever. I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do. And I can’t handle that. That bothers me. I like things to be neat and orderly and to go according to plan,” Albert let out a huff at the end of his tirade. “There. I said my piece. Your turn,”

At that moment Ed walked into the room, nodded at them briefly, as if sensing that their discussion was a private matter, and made his way out of the house. They could hear the rumble of the engine as Ed started up the ambulance and drove off down the road. 

Audrey hesitated, and looked away at her hands. She was twisting at the edge of her suit coat, regressed to youthful tendencies. Coping methods. Distractions. A teenager in Cooper’s presence, all over again. “He flinched when he saw me, when I spoke. He hasn’t looked at me or acknowledged me since. God, Albert, I knew it would be bad but… All those women, I  _ know _ why he can’t bare to even look at me. It just hurts so much. I thought I was prepared but-”

“There’s never been any preparing for this and you know it,” Albert said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Shit, what a pair we make,” He shook his head and coughed out a laugh, harsh and degrading. Audrey laughed too, a hollow, unhappy sound. 

“If you’re not going to call Gordon yet, then maybe you should call David. Hear his voice. Get your wits together,” Audrey said. Albert nodded at the suggestion. 

“Yeah, I told him I’d call. But he doesn’t really understand about this. You know how it is,”

And she did, really, know exactly what Albert was talking about. How could anyone, especially a significant other, understand why they were doing what they were?Why Dale Cooper was so important? But David had been an unquestioning and supportive partner to Albert thus far. And even a decade into their relationship, he was still willing to listen, even if Albert couldn’t tell him everything. And even if David couldn’t empathize on every level, it still helped. And, Audrey thought, despite the pleading voice in her heart, at least Albert had  _ someone _ . 

“You’ll be okay?” Albert asked, if only out of routine. They both knew how she would answer, and they both knew that it would be less than the truth. Albert looked at Audrey pointedly, waiting for her response. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,”

She wouldn’t think of the flinch, of the fear, or the pain that she’d seen in Dale when she’d first spoken in the ambulance. She wouldn’t imagine his face in that moment, or how it felt as he turned away from her. She’d put it away in a box and take it out and deal with it later. Like she always had. Like she would always do, despite her hopes, which she couldn’t even afford to acknowledge she had, lest they tear her to pieces in the process. Like the emotions threatening to spill forth when she thought of his face, lucid and awake and  _ himself _ for the first time in twenty-five years. Older, refined, and still just as beautiful. 

She loved him.

As Albert turned and walked away, Audrey finally succumbed to the pressure, the tidal wave that had been threatening to overcome her from the moment she’d seen him lying a pool of his own blood, half dead by his own hand.

She growled to herself, angry with the tears and the ache and the desperate hope. 

Audrey would have rather cut her heart out than remind herself that she loved him. It was a pain worse than dying, to acknowledge that she loved him, that he couldn’t even look at her, he’d been so traumatized. That BOB had preyed on women with her features and characteristics, among others, so often that he couldn’t separate her from the victims that had been killed with his hands, and violated by his body and- Audrey couldn’t blame him for not wanting to be around her. Every time he saw her, he must be reminded of what happened.

She hurried outside, desperate for fresh air, feeling faintly nauseous.  Her face was flushed and the cool air felt good against her skin. She looked down at her hands, which were gripped knuckle-white around the wood-rough railing of the porch. 

On the breeze she heard the indistinct sound of Albert talking to David over the phone. The rest was nature noise only. Birds tweeting here or there, the trees rustling, the low hum of the wind. A bug buzzing.  Attempting to empty her mind, Audrey focused only on those noises, and on the beat of her heart, low and thudding in her ears, consciously attempting to slow it as best as she could. Her eyes were still burning, but there were no more tears to be had. Inside she felt raw. How had they got here? She wondered. How had they started out so small and insular and average, and yet end up where they were? 

She’d learned a lot about Dale’s life in his absence, something which had initially felt like an invasion of his privacy, but that slowly turned to a desperate urge to hold on to every piece of him that she was allowed, like a beggar for scraps. Wistful, she imagined her eighteen year old self, precocious and self assured, riding high on the catching disease that Dale Cooper brought with him everywhere he went.  _ Hope _ . 

Eighteen year old Audrey fresh in her mind, she focused, allowing her to take shape. Trying to listen as her lips moved, formed words. 

_ It’s not a disease. It’s a cure. Dale Cooper knows the cure and it’s hope. _

But you don’t see it now, you don’t see how things have gotten. How he’s gotten. Hope is just naïveté masquerading as a plan. As something real and tangible and achievable. You haven’t seen the world yet, you don’t know. 

_ You’re wrong, and you know it. You’ve already seen more of the world at eighteen than any girl or boy is meant to. You were already less innocent in the hard hands the world deals by sixteen, by twelve, by eight. You knew then. Now you’re just jaded. You’ve lost the faith. If you can’t get it back, then there really is no hope. No hope for you, or for him. Don’t forget it. Don’t forget what you lived for back then, what made you strong, what kept you going. Don’t forget how you got where you are now. You were me. You were me and now you’re you but we’re still each other. Don’t forget the only thing that kept you strong. You had a deal. You made a deal with Dale Cooper, and Dale Cooper doesn’t back out on his deals. And neither do you. _

He’d better watch out. 

_ You bet he’d better.  _

* * *

When Albert returned from his phone call, the house was silent. Audrey was standing on the porch looking very far away, so he let her be and made his way into the house. Ed had driven off only a few minutes ago, but Albert was loath to leave Cooper alone for any longer than that. The door, when he came to it, was closed, and a nervous feeling coiled in his stomach as he recalled the last time that Cooper was behind a closed door. He hadn’t been there to witness it, but he’d heard about what had happened. Remembered seeing pictures of the stitches in Cooper’s forehead from where he smashed it into the mirror.

Cautious, terrified of what he’d discover, Albert tested the door. It was open, and he felt relief course through him. 

“Cooper,” He knocked gently. “It’s Albert. I’m going to come in,” Without waiting for a response, he opened the door to reveal Cooper sitting on the bed. His back was to the window, which flooded the room with light, leaving Dale silhouetted in the black abyss of shadow. His shoulders were shaking. 

“Coop?” Albert moved forward slowly, careful not to disturb him. “You doing okay?” When he finally rounded the other edge of the bed, he could see that Dale was crying again. Albert took in a deep breath, preparing himself mentally. He sat down next to his friend, careful to leave a space between them, and waited. 

It was quiet for several minutes before Dale finally spoke. 

“I heard you talking,”. 

The words dropped into Albert’s stomach, heavy as a boulder, despite the lack of accusation in Dale’s voice. Cooper opened his mouth again, and for a moment, Albert thought he was going to continue, but he let out a sob instead. 

Another moment’s pause and then - “I know she lo-ves me,” His voice hitched when he uttered the word ‘love’ and Albert, despite his thorny composure, felt something inside him break. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve her. Why?” Dale turned suddenly, quickly, his wide, entreating eyes on Albert, who drew back subconsciously. “Why? Why hasn’t she- Why wouldn’t she- Why does she still-?” Though he finished none of his inquiries, the meaning behind them was more than clear. 

Albert didn’t know how to respond, and so he said nothing. Dale looked away again, out through the window and into the woods. For a little while, Albert closed his eyes and pretended that everything was okay. That it was twenty five years previous and all was right with the world. 

Just as he was beginning to believe it, Dale spoke again, out of the blue. 

“I killed Harry,” 

Albert’s eyes flew open, but he sat stock still, not even daring to look at Cooper. 

“I killed him. In his kitchen. He knew. He guessed. So he had to die. BOB wanted him dead so badly. I remember everything. He wanted me to remember that one, he said, so that I would learn my lesson. That if I tried anything he’d kill the next one on the list. Maybe you, sometimes Lucy. Hawk. Norma. Anyone at all. He killed Harry. With my hands,”

Dale paused as if mulling over his next words, and Albert snuck a glance. There was a dark shadow across Dale’s face that had nothing to do with the light in the room. 

“He didn’t like that I tried to kill myself. In the bathroom. With the mirror. I knew what was happening to me. I thought… The opportunity...Better off dead than his pawn…” Dale’s words dissolved briefly into mumblings, but Albert could still make them out. He shivered and though he half wished that that was the end of it, Dale began again. “He says that I’m his favourite. That he’d wanted me too long to give me up so soon,” Then, quietly, almost a whisper, he added. “He said he wants to keep me forever,” Dale’s hands clenched and unclenched in his lap. He was still looking straight out the window, riveted.

Unable to help himself, Albert let out the breath he’d been holding. 

“Well he’s not going to Coop. Hawk and Audrey and I are going to make damned sure of that,”

Dale flinched and looked away from the window when Albert said Audrey’s name. 

“Jesus, Coop,” Albert breathed the words. “You don’t have to deserve her love for her to give it, you know. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in twenty five years, it’s that sometimes you’ve got to take what’s given to you freely and unconditionally, damn the consequences. Now, I know he’s messed with your head, God knows I know it, maybe not as well as you, but I’ve...seen the evidence. Don’t let him ruin another good thing, Cooper. Fight back. Don’t let him have it, if you can. But if you can’t...look she doesn’t like it any more than you or I, but she understands. It’s unconditional, Coop. Unconditional. Don’t forget that,”

He stood then, sighed heavily and turned towards the door. 

“I’ll bring you dinner in a bit,”

He waited to see if Dale would respond, but he only sat, still as when Albert had first entered the room. Albert hung his head, and stepped out of the room, leaving the door open behind him. 

* * *

Dale Cooper sat staring out the window. The sun had waned low in the sky, and only a few stray rays filtered through the trees to paint the walls of the spare room with colour. Each moment passed both infinitesimally and eternally as he determined the future that lay before him. What kind of a future could it possibly be, in a world where everything would be changed?

For twenty five years he’d lived a half life. Not even. For twenty five years he’d been little more than a slave to the whims of a dark entity. But all that was coming to a close. What would become of him?, he wondered. 

Dale gazed out the window, focus straying in and out as the sunlight depleted around him. It was getting late and getting dark and he was getting nervous. How long did the doses of haloperidol last? He didn’t know. It was something he thought maybe he should have asked Albert. But his mind was still hazy at best. Earlier all he could think about was the fact that, for once, in twenty five years, he actually had a future.

In his solitude, even the barest hint of noise was grating. There was a silent sound from behind him as if somebody were waiting, hovering at the door. What would he find, if he turned his head? he wondered. Any prescient knowledge that he had grown accustomed to as BOB was utterly diminished in light of the circumstances. But he knew already who it would be. He turned, just slightly, so that his profile was visible. 

“Hello Audrey,” he said soft, voice quivering. 

“Hello Agent Cooper,” She said in return. “I have your dinner,”

He didn’t move again but remained as he was. Thinking. Thinking. Blocking out all the memories that came flooding forewards any time he caught even half a glimpse of her face. All the moments and all the words that BOB had used. The scenarios he had described. The ways that he would violate her, touch her defile her. All the ways that he had violated and touched and defiled other women who had shared her likeness. Dale cringed. Pushed it all from his mind. But it lingered, a sour taste in his mouth. 

“That’s fine. You can put it over there. I’m not really hungry.”

Audrey didn’t move either. He could tell that she was on the precipice between action and inaction. That she wanted to speak to him. That she wanted to say something, anything. He could feel in that empty moment the sentiment that she carried, with every gaze that she cast upon him, whether he saw her eyes or not, he knew what she was saying. 

_ I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you _

“Okay,” She finally said and took a step over the threshold and into the room. There was a nightstand close to the bed where she eventually placed the platter of food and a glass of water. And next to it…

Dale sat up straighter. “Haloperidol?” he asked. Very quietly. 

“Yes. Albert said it’s time,”

“Is it?” He asked, mostly to himself. “Is it really time? Would I feel him? Would I know if it was?”

Audrey appeared shocked that she’d even voiced his concerns and nodded. 

“Yes. Don’t you remember Philip Gerard?” She questioned. “From everything I’ve heard about that, he knew,”

“Then why is it time?”

Audrey stalled for a moment, twisting at her fingertips “Albert thinks that it’s better if we do it sooner, before it has a chance to wear off,”

“Ah, I see,” He said, though he sounded distant once more.

“I can administer it for you,” there was a quiver in her voice now, a shake. A shake like he once recalled his hand shaking. As if tremored by fear and fear alone. As if it had become a physical representation of emotion. Audrey held the delicate syringe between her fingers. “If you’d roll up your sleeve - “

“No,” Dale said. “I won’t. I can’t. I-I...I-I-I can’t. I can’t,”

“Dale,” Her tone was pleading with him, soft, tentative, as if waiting, hoping, desperately that he might appease her. 

“No,” he said, his hand gripping tight to fists. “I can’t let you,”

“Why not?”

“I can’t let you any nearer to me,”

“Why. Not.“

“Because he wants you,” Saying the words made them too real, and Dale had to stifle the impulse to shiver.

Audrey stilled. Even the firm anger in her voice had disappeared. “Because he wants me? Don’t you think I don’t already know that?” She asked. “I’ve seen every crime report we have. I have eyes, I’ve seen the pattern,” She paused waiting for her words to sink it. “Don’t you understand that I just don’t care? Not about that. Or maybe I just care too much,” She took a step towards him, arms out, and hand open, as if to accept him to her, but she stopped herself short. Hesitantly, she asked the question they both were dreading.  “Don’t you understand how much I love you?”

The words hung  heavy in the air like a fog, a mist, a curtain. Dale shuddered, felt his eyes start to burn again. “I know you love me. You shouldn’t” There was an ominous tone to his words. He thought inwardly only about dark and desperate and terrible things. All the moments that were ever comprised of her imagined, porcelain, and unaged face, screaming in utter terror...

“I don’t give a damn, Dale,” Audrey replied her voice firm. “I don’t give a damn. I’ve spent twenty five years looking for you. I became an FBI Agent so I could help find you and I’ve done other things, good, Important things, that I might never have done otherwise. And I’m glad. I’m glad that I did. You inspired me and despite everything that I know and you know and all that there is between us, I don’t give a damn that he wants me, and that he wants to kill me. I don’t care! Love has got to be more powerful than BOB! And even if you don’t love me back and never will, that isn’t going to stop me from loving you. Ever. You can take it or you can leave it. What is, is, and I can’t change that.” Audrey brooked no room for argument and for a split second Dale felt the muscles in his cheeks twitch upward, felt the desire to turn and face her, to let her soothing touch take away his every uncertainty, his every pain. Quickly, Dale smothered the sensation.

He stood suddenly, shot up like a rocket. Audrey, to her credit, didn’t flinch. He was still facing away from her, hands clenched in firm, bruising fists at his sides. “You should care Audrey. You should care. Do you have so little regard for your life or for my feelings? Do you have so little regard for any of it?”

“It’s all I do regard!” She pleaded. He could hear it in her tone, hear what went unsaid still.  _ Please, I love you. Please let me- Please please please Dale- _

“Then you should care if you live or die, because it’s what I’m trying to protect you from!” He half shouted, fingernails now carving crescents into the tender flesh of his palm.

“I know what’s out there. What could happen. I don’t need your protection Dale. I’m more than well aware. It’s you that needs protecting. Let me help you, let me take care of you please,” And there it was, just as he’d suspected. Fervent. Despairing. 

He shook his head “No. Get Albert. He can apply the haloperidol. I can’t look at you, I- I can’t talk to you,”

“Does he grow stronger every time you look at me, think of me? Do you feel it, tight in your stomach? Those urges he wants you to feel? “ She stepped closer to him, the closeness of her presence like a dare, egging him on. He could feel her behind him, like the cloak of blessed darkness. He wanted to lash out, to push her away, anything to keep her from the violent truth, even though he knew from her words that it would be futile, as she was already speaking the thoughts he had tried so desperately to stifle. 

“I don’t give a damn, Dale, because I know what it’s going to take you save you. And not anyone, not you and especially not BOB, is going to get in my way,” With those final words, Audrey left the room a flurry and Dale, breathing hard, tears biting at his cheeks, let her. 

* * *

Audrey came storming back through the doorway, syringe in hand. “Here take it,” She pushed it at Albert. “He wants you to do it,” She brushed past her friend, her shoulder grazing his, and into another room, undoubtedly to deal with whatever unpleasantness she’d undergone in privacy. Albert swore under his breath and looked down at the syringe. It rested innocuously in his palm - the elephant in the room. After a long moment he curled his fingers around the cool plastic. 

Dale’s doorway was pitch black, but Albert could still see his profile. He was standing, and in the darkness, the pale contrast of Dale’s skin made it seem as though he were glowing. Something about him looked strained, like he was stretched thin, across whatever metaphysical plane the soul existed in, and the thing inside of him was burning out through his flesh. 

“Cooper? I need to give you the dose of haloperidol,”

“That’s fine, Albert,”

“Why didn’t you just let Audrey do it?”

Dale stiffened, straightened his back in response, clenched his teeth. “Not. Audrey,”

Albert only huffed and reached for Cooper’s arm. A bit more forceful than he’d intended, Albert gripped Dale around the wrist and pushed the sleeve upwards along the arm until the crook of his elbow. With even less grace, Albert turned his friend’s hand palm upwards, left at the forearm in the dark. 

“Goddamn it,” he ground out, letting Dale’s arm drop so that he could get the light. The whole while, Dale didn’t speak. The lamp gave off a yellow glow and the colour it leant Dale did him no favours. Again, Albert reached for Dale’s arm and this time, found the vein with ease before sliding the needle home. 

As Albert pushed in the plunger, he glanced up at Dale; where once the inquiring mind may have lit up in interest to watch the progress of what was happening, this version of Dale Cooper looked only only because it seemed he had nothing else to do. No spark rose behind his green eyes, now dulled of their life. 

Albert was hit with a deep, entrenching wave of sadness and felt instantly the desire to leave the room. 

“You’re all set, Coop,” Albert said. Dale rolled his sleeve down with disinterest.  The air around them grew stagnant, filled with all of Albert’s mental stops and starts, the half thought out phrases and the partial sentences he’d composed. Earlier in the day it had all come so easily to him, to reassure Dale, but now, by night, they’d lost their potency, their quality. 

A few more strange, empty moments passed before Albert left the room, leaving all the things he’d not said, unsaid still.

He found Audrey sitting at the small round kitchen table. The only light came from the mounted globe over the sink. Audrey, who normally appeared golden in such light, looked little better than Cooper had. She sat with her chin propped over her laced fingers, elbows on the table edge. 

“It’s done,” He said. Instead of sitting, he placed his own hands on the table and let the whole of his weight fall onto them. “He said all of five words,” He looked around the room, eyes drawn to the dishes in the sink, to a drip plopping regularly from the faucet. A bug buzzed at the screen of the window underneath the light, desperately trying to reach it’s enticing source. Audrey stared, eyes glazed, at a point on the wall. “You really did a number on him,”

Finally, Audrey moved a fraction. Her lips parted, and even that much looked agonizing. 

“He’s never going to be the same,” The way she made it sound, it seemed so mundane. Albert felt weary.

“I know,”

“So what are we going to do about it?” She shifted then, tilting her chin upwards.  Albert was at a loss for words again and didn’t respond. Audrey leaned back into the chair in one slow, fluid movement. It looked like she was falling back in slow motion, the candid grace of her exhale captured in the uncertainty of the moment, in the utter defeat of her figure. She looked up from under her long, dark lashes.  Her eyes, shadowed, were deep set, gleaming white crescents. “Admit it. You didn’t think that we would ever-”

“I had my doubts,” Suddenly defensive, Albert gripped the edges of the table so tight that his fingers paled at blood loss. “Yes, goddamn it, I had my doubts. It’s been so long, Audrey! Realistically…” He stopped the sentence dead, let the rest of the words turn to ash, burning their mental paper. “Hope’s a commodity I’ve never had in scores. That was always Cooper’s thing, and since him, it’s been yours. So no. I didn’t think we would,” He leaned forward across the table into the emptiness between them. “Did you?”

Her intake of breath was deafening. It was sharp and cut like a knife across the cheek, stung like-

Audrey was standing, her hand raised. She’d moved so quickly in counteraction to her earlier languid though depressive compose, that he hadn’t even seen it when her palm made contact with his face. 

“You slapped me!” He blinked owlishly in surprise, rubbing his cheek where it had grown bright red, Audrey’s thin fingers outlined clearly. “Jesus fucking - You slapped me!”

It was Audrey’s turn to lean across the small table, shaking her pointer finger in his face violently.

“Don’t you  _ ever  _ expect me to have enough hope for all of us! I’ve relied on you all these years! It was just you and me, and Gordon, but really, when it came down to it, it’s been just you and me, and you  _ listened  _ to me, and you  _ helped  _ me, you  _ got  _ me where I am today. When I thought it was hopeless, it was you who prodded me along, Albert. You! I was without hope plenty often! So don’t you  _ dare _ tell me that you don’t have any left to spare. It’s not me who needs it right now, it’s Dale. And I don’t have much left to offer him on my own,”  When her words finally ran out, Audrey’s whole petite frame was shaking, vibrating with fury. Albert watched her, shocked. In an instant, all the air left her lungs, the tension drained away and she collapsed, exhausted, back into the chair, head resting back and eyes shut tight. “Oh God, Albert, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

“First we have to free him from BOB,” Albert started, trying very hard to steady his voice. 

“And then?” She still reclined, closed off from the world, the little divet of a wrinkle present between her dark, arching brows the only indication that she wasn’t utterly relaxed. “We’re supposed to have delivered him to Seattle for holding and trial. We’ve got a day at best before someone gets curious. And after...BOB...how will we account for...how will we account for this, Albert? I know that Gordon has our backs, but this is madness. He can’t...he can’t go to trial, Albert. He just can’t,”

“I know,” Albert move to stand by her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know what we’ll do, but whatever it is, we’ll do it. For Cooper,”

“For Cooper,” She replied, voice drifting, hazy. She lifted a hand to her head and pinched the bridge of her nose, but said nothing more as she tried to stave off what was undoubtedly the beginning of one of her frequently increasing tension headaches. 

Albert stood there next to her  for a long time, contemplating all the things that they had not said with words, all the places their unfinished sentences lead. It was obvious that Cooper was utterly traumatized. Definitely in shock. Would most likely require counseling and care for possibly the rest of his life. All truths too hard to face, too terrible to voice aloud. But Audrey had been right about one thing. Dale couldn’t go to trial. Dale  _ absolutely could not _ go to prison. That, Albert decided, was not an option. He would be tried. The judge and jury would be confused by his mental state. He’d end up pleading insanity and receive a sentence of life in a federal institution. 

“You know you won’t be able to take care of him by yourself, don’t you,” Albert’s words pierced the silence, leaving it ragged. It was less a question and more a statement. 

After an eternity, and in a very, very small voice, Audrey answered him. 

“I know,”

When the clock’s hands made it to ten O’clock, Audrey was asleep in the chair.  Albert stiffly made his way back to Dale’s room, uncertain of what he’d find, but aware that there were things that needed doing. 

“How’s that shoulder, Coop?” He asked after knocking gently. The light was still on from earlier, and Dale was sitting again, this time up against the headboard.  Cooper shrugged in response, though the movement was obviously stunted by his infirmity. “I’ve got to clean that out and rewrap it. And dose you before bed,”

Dale seemed to still be regressed into the state he’d first been in after waking up in the ambulance. He let Albert move around him, let him poke and prod and doctor all without complaint, but also without any help. Albert helped him off with his shirt. Albert leaned him forwards or backwards as needed. Albert lifted his arm out so that he could unwrap the gauze. Albert helped him on with his night shirt. Albert got him to stand. Albert helped him into his sleep pants. Albert rolled up the sleeve, injected the haloperidol, rolled the sleeve back down. 

Dale just sat. 

Only when Albert brought out some pills did Dale react, stiffening and looking at the little bottle warily. 

“It’s just a sedative, Coop. It’ll help you sleep,”

“No. I don’t need it,” He said.

“Suit yourself,” Albert put it away, watching Dale from the corner of his eye. Dale, now under the covers of the bed, looked for all the world as if he were a statue, a wax replica, a lifeless, spiritless husk. Albert clenched his jaw tightly to stop the tears. Despite the fact that BOB was contained, the Dale Cooper Albert had loved had been well and truly destroyed long ago. “Goodnight, Dale,” He said. “I’ll see you in the morning,” 

He turned out the light and left the room, unable to contain the burning drops that trailed down his cheeks any longer. 

Despite what he had told Albert, Cooper did not fall asleep. In fact, he had very little intention of trying to sleep. Sleep was a dangerous land. His dreams would hold no solace for him. Instead, he well knew, they would bring him far closer to BOB, even while contained, than Dale ever wanted to be again. Dreams were the gateway to the place where he’d been trapped for almost three decades, and he didn’t want to go back accidentally. Didn’t want to give BOB the chance. 

He shuddered at the chill that washed over him and he banished the thought. Resolute, he lay, eyes wide, and stared at the ceiling. The wind was rattling at the window pane so he focused all the emptiness into noise, trying to recall to mind the noisiest, most unsettling song he’d ever heard to drown it out. The wind was BOB’s ally, just like the Owls, and the night, and Dale wanted no part of it. 

In the middle of his mental concert, Dale suddenly heard a new sound. The soft breathing of a woman. It was Audrey, of that at least he could be certain. Dale closed his eyes and evened his breath hoping that she’d believe he was sleeping, for more reasons than one. As she drew nearer to him it grew harder to accomplish his deception.  The air rippled as she reached her arm closer to him until the pads of her fingers dragged across the skin of his forehead and down his cheek. The caress was something he’d not felt in years. Innocent, without ulterior motive, and meant for him.  The real him.

While he’d expected her to talk, Audrey continued her vigil in silence, a dip in the weight on the mattress the only indication that she’d sat. Her intention, Dale concluded, was to stay with him. Unbidden, he felt the tears return. He felt her surprise in the mattress when he shuddered his first, silent sob. He could feel the weight shift as she leaned over him, checking to see if he was still sleeping or…

“Why do you care so much?” He rasped. “You’ve always cared and it’s always too much. I’ve never deserved your affection. Not then and not now,”

“It’s mine to give as I please,” She placed a hand on his shoulder and he finally opened his eyes to stare into the shadows of her face. “And it’s always been yours. You gave me what I needed, even if it wasn’t what I wanted. I needed someone to care about me. You cared for me when no one else did. And I care for you now. And so does Albert. And Gordon. And so many others. Without Denise’s help, I’d never have gotten onto your case. Ed volunteered to drive the ambulance. Hawk provided his house. Gordon’s covering for us, and Hawk is stalling any outside interference that comes our way. You cared about us, Dale. You cared about us and now we’re caring back. Don’t let go when we’re so close. Don’t give up now. Don’t give up on the future. On yourself. Don’t shut us out. Don’t shut me out. Please,”

Overwhelmed by her words, exhausted from the effort of trying to stay awake and desperate for the first genuine physical affection he’d had since that terrible day twenty five years prior, Dale reached for her, allowing himself to find comfort in her arms. She hushed him as he sobbed, burying his face into the crook of her neck, hands seeking purchase at her back. Her arms came around him naturally, holding him with security and the strength of her character. They maneuvered so that Audrey was propped against the headboard Dale’s head pillowed on her chest. She stroked his hair and whispered nothings at him for some minutes. Just before he fell asleep in Audrey’s embrace, Dale realized that she’d not only banished his loneliness, but his fear too.

 

* * *

When Albert got up that morning, Audrey wasn’t in the kitchen where he’d left her. Curious, he made his way around the house without finding her. The only place he hadn’t checked was Dale’s room, and something told him that he wasn’t going to look outside. 

When he entered the room, the rose gold light of dawn had just barely begun to creep up the walls of the room. They lay together on the bed; Audrey was awake. Dale lay beside her, his head pillowed on the incline of her chest, sound asleep. 

With silent communication, Audrey indicated that they were both alright and that Albert could leave. He crept to the bedside table and placed there a syringe. The mood of the room, which until that point had been much lighter than Albert had anticipated, darkened considerably. The presence of that single dose of haloperidol meant the difference between Cooper and BOB. He exhaled his tension, nodded curtly at Audrey, whose eyes did the talking for her and left the room. 

Albert was sitting with a cup of coffee when Hawk finally arrived home. He’d told them he’d be staying the night at Andy and Lucy’s when they had organized Cooper’s transport. It had been easily agreed that he was in no condition to be receiving too many visitors. Hawk would be the only person arriving that day. He took off his hat, and unpinned his sheriff’s badge and lay them on the table next to Albert’s steaming mug. 

“Lo Albert,”

“Lo Hawk. Been a long time,”

“Yes. It has. How did things go?”

“Could have been worse. Could have been a lot worse,”

“Where’s Audrey?”

“In with Coop,” Albert didn’t expound upon the circumstances and Hawk didn’t ask. “How’s the wife?”

“Alright. How’s your partner?”

“Good,” They nodded at each other once again. Hawk went to the counter and poured his own mug. He sat down in the chair across the table from Albert and took a sip. 

“Good Coffee,”

“Yup,”

“My wife makes better coffee,”

“I’m not your wife, so don’t expect me to try again,”

Hawk smirked but didn’t bother responding. The tension was growing again, palpable. The knowledge of what was housed under that roof was enough to quiet both of them, leaving them feeling far too sober and far less jittery despite the caffeine consumption. Albert took a sip. And then Hawk. And then Albert again. And then Hawk. 

As Albert went to take his final sip, Audrey spoke from the hallway. “Dale’s woke up and I gave him-”

Albert spluttered, surprised by her presence. “Christ Audrey, give a man some warning!”

“I dosed him,” She finished her sentence curtly, grabbing her own mug from the cabinet and pouring it in one, graceful motion that looked long practiced and perfected. “Like you wanted. He let me this morning, but he’s in a foul mood. He knows. And...HE knows too… I can tell. It’s why Dale’s unhappy. With the astrological conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn coming this evening...Well, it’s like a cat on the full moon. BOB’s getting frisky,” Her tone was so cavalier that Hawk’s mouth hung open. 

Albert furrowed his brow. Sardonic, he replied, “And you’re sure he’s not frisky because-”

“I’m sure my presence hasn’t helped, if that’s what you’re getting at,” She leaned back against the counter, blowing steam out from the mug. “But it’s a step in the right direction for Dale. So don’t question it. We can make this happen. It all converges tonight, and then we’ll deal with whatever else may come. What’s important is that we get BOB out of the way first. And we all know that that’s on Dale. He’s the one who needs the hope, who needs to believe in himself. We just need to get him there,”

Audrey’s words gave way to silence. There was little to really talk about that was pleasant so they said nothing instead, sipping their coffee.  When he entered the room they all felt it instantly rise five degrees in temperature. Strange how BOB’s presence gave off heat instead of chills. Albert set his mug down quickly, looking at his hand as it shook, beyond his control. 

The silence was shattered as Audrey’s mug crashed to the ground. Her hand too, was shaking, as was Hawk’s. 

They all looked up to where Dale stood in the doorway. He wore a blank expression, despite the shadows both in and under his eyes. His eyes were piercing. 

“Hello Coop,” Hawk said. 

Cooper looked directly into Hawk’s eyes, but said nothing. 

The moment lasted in suspension, and then was suddenly broken as Audrey finally bent to pick up the pieces of porcelain lying in coffee on the linoleum floor. 

“God, I’m sorry, Hawk,”

“It’s no big deal, Audrey. Don’t worry about it,” He said as he joined her with some paper towels. Albert remained where he was, watching Cooper, who hadn’t moved an inch since he appeared. 

“Coop, you good? Cooper?”

Stiffly, as though it was difficult for him, Cooper turned his head to look at Albert. 

“He’s laughing Albert. He’s laughing inside me,” 

All movement ceased as reality hit home. 

“He’s laughing because he knows that he’ll be out again soon. And if that happens,” Dale’s voice was thin, shaky, dead, “He’s going to kill you all.”


	8. Somewhere in the Nowhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere in the Nowhere by David Lynch and Christa Bell is a great song to listen to for this piece. 
> 
> But here it is. I'm done. I made it. Tomorrow is the season 3 premiere. May it be both wonderful and strange.
> 
> If you're concerned about the tags, check the end notes for spoilers.

They make their ascent to Glastonbury grove at dusk, anxious and filled with silent dread. None in the vehicle speak. When they park at the roadside and make the rest of the trek on foot the pounding in his head begins. Somewhere in his ancestral memories, thrumming of drums and the flicker of firelight on a cave wall fill his senses completely. Deeply, in through his nose, he takes the scent of pine and water and decay and the evidence of life and immerses himself, saturating his being with the very essence of it all. The forest, dark and mysterious, a million secrets living in its branches, is within him, has entered him, growing in his lungs like an invasive vine, and living in his breathe like fungal spores. Through the curtains of green needle branches, the winter-dead circle of sycamores still fills him with an ancient, creeping, insidious dread. There is a burning in his veins now, and his heart palpitates at it, erratic. His hands tremor, a jittering signal that travels up his arm. Evil lives in him. Evil took residence in his body and used it to rape and molest and murder and defile. Evil lies in wait, buried deep inside him, nestled next to the tenuous resting place of his soul, where it comes when it has the chance to escape the in-between through the doorway found only in dreams.

His bones ache with the accumulated weight of his body’s history. Hands that hit, and bruised and slapped and stabbed and carved. Hands that killed. His mouth, bitter with the taste of his victim’s blood, the result of the profane actions of the being he holds within. In a body older than he remembers, that bears a face as weathered as his soul feels. Ravaged by the darkness.

The cuffs chafe at his wrists, but it’s a passing irritant. He’d insisted on them, though it had been suggested that they use rope instead. Cuffs, he had insisted. Cuffs were the only thing that _he_ couldn’t get out of. He shivers. The scent of burnt engine oil fills his nostrils. It’s a putrid scent, but he can’t stop the _someone_ within him from reveling in it. He shivers again, and this time, it’s only half from revulsion.

He looks up at the sky. At where the moon is but a nascent sliver casting down filmy shadows that float in place across the trees. Pale light.

An owl hoots.

He shivers, blanches, feels the flush of his body retreating at that most horrific sound. He knows he’ll never be able to hear an owl’s hoot again without reliving the traumas he’s endured. The traumas he’s forced others to endure.

It’s all too much. The door inside him is rattling, violently against the latch. The hinges are splintering the wood, the knob shakes and shakes and shakes and he is shaking too, all over, shuddering, not a seizure, but a full body tremor, unable to move from the spot where he stands. Petrified. It comes over him like a douse of ice water.

He feels hands come down firmly on his shoulders, one man on either side, holding him steady, securing him. The wind blows against him, and he would be swaying like an aged, dying fir if it weren’t for the support they offer. The chill seeps into his pores, washes over him like a vengeful wave, but the danger is inside of him, not without, and so he doesn’t fear the wind, or the howling it makes in his ears, doesn’t fear it like he did the last time. It can’t harm him. He already carries the disease it spreads.

There is plenty enough to fear as it is.

While they stand there, holding him as he shakes, waiting, buffeted in the wind, he has a vision.

In the trees, hidden by the grasping, clutching arms of the firs, he sees a woman. She wears a red skirt and blouse, but simultaneously it is a black dress, dark as the abyss. She is blonde, and looks at him with eternus eyes, eyes that have seen the beginning and the end, and have now come to tell him something. Something, he suspects, he has heard before, but never quite managed to remember.  She has wings when her dress is black; great dark wings that arch out around her like an enormous bird. Her eyes are white and glaring, milky and dead. She opens her mouth and the bird in her cries, greedily, sinister, at him.

When she wears the red skirt, her eyes are still white, but she has no wings. Her hand is held out to him, like an invitation. She looks a picture, like he’d cut her from one of his mother’s magazines, with red lips and plastic ball earrings and a matching necklace. Cookie cutter perfect. When she opens her mouth, there is only a wail and the way she shapes her lips looks like his name. He cannot hear what she says all the same.

The woman in black and the woman in red blur together and he cannot tell which is which, only that they both want him, only that they are both coming for him, and that he cannot escape. That in the end, one or the other will grasp him, or both, and that once they do _something_ will happen. What it is, he does not know.

He opens his mouth to call back, but no sound comes out and the vision fades and the only noise he hears then are his own wretched sobs. Even the support his friends – he has friends! People still care and he is shocked all over again to imagine the thought, that after everything, after what his weakness has wrought, there are still people who care for him! – offer cannot keep him standing, and he drops to his knees, hunched over with pain from the force of his cries and from a writhing growing inside of him that he cannot control, like a hand that wants to push loose, rip out of the flesh of his abdomen and emerge a new, corporeal person, leaving him to bleed out, an empty, used _useless_ husk.

It is then that he remembers MIKE, and recalls the warning, that without MIKE, Philip Gerard would not survive, and that without BOB inside him, he too, will likely fade away to nothing, to the sweet release of death. He welcomes the thought, allows it to light a fire within him. The knowledge that his last act on this earth may be to rid it of an entity that had terrorized so many is sweet. And then, he can go to his rest, to the bliss of oblivion. He thinks it on repeat, like a prayer. It is a bitter redemption, but the only one he can see before him. The path has narrowed.

The light of his vision is still fading, and, when he looks up again, he sees a real, tangible woman in the vision’s place. She is wearing both red and black and it’s so apropos that he thinks for a moment about canting his head back and releasing a laugh, but laughing is a thing that belongs to BOB and so he doesn’t laugh, just looks on, eyes perpetually wide in anticipation of what is to come.  She doesn’t reach out for him, nor is she particularly looking at him, rather at a place just beyond him. He refocuses his attention to the place behind her, to the place from which the stench of burning engine oil emanates. Light from an unidentified source is growing there, like it’s taken the stage, and he’s just waiting in the audience to see behind the curtain. His inactive state bothers him, but there’s nothing he can do but wait, nothing anyone can do. He is not the knight on the board, can’t skip around, can’t take pawns or bishops or queens. He is the king on this board, he knows, stuck in the corner, only moving one space at a time in response to the actions of those around him. Reactionary. Stunted.

He is the _host_. He is the thing that will be acted on, instead of the one doing the acting.

His hands dig into the soil. Dirt clings beneath his nails and that singular annoyance grounds him, centers his thoughts, keeps him from floating away, from allowing his mind to vacate the situation, no matter how desperately he desires that exact thing. He is weak; he feels a trickle of sweat at his chilled brow. It’s warm and drips down his forehead, slides to the left of his nose and continues down his cheek. He lifts a shaking hand to his face and his dirt-grimed fingers come away sticky and red.

There’s a pain starting at the center of his hairline, the site of the old scar left from his first encounter with the mirror. His side aches acutely, a shooting pain through the area where he’d nicked his kidney when he’d last attempted to kill himself, and he wonders if he’s begun to bleed there too, if all his old wounds will open up again until the scar left by Windom Earle’s knife in Pittsburgh peels itself open too and he dies before anything can be done at all.

The prospect is at once terrifying and filled with utter relief.

Someone is speaking his name, but his hearing is muffled, and he ignores it, unable to focus. The light in the grove of sycamores is growing brighter, and he feels the writhing inside him more keenly than before, with an acute sense of imminent action.  He doubles over, groaning, digging his hands, claw-like, into the dirt.

The wind picks up and strands of his hair whip at his eyes. Tears bead out, are blown across his cheeks by the force of it, and something in him compels him to stand, to walk forward, to loose his grip on his side and attempt to spread his arms, despite his bindings and embrace the inevitable. He stumbles, but keeps walking, a man entranced, an automaton that only performs prescribed movements, over and over again.

Then, a great crack rends the air, the light flash illuminating the whole woods and everything in it for just that split second. Fire erupts from the place he was watching, beyond the sycamores and then, all at once, rain begins to fall, pattering against the wood.

Someone is screaming.

It’s him.

He looks at his hands, holding them out in front of him, watching in horror. He can see the steam rising up from his skin where the rain hits, and he feels the burning inside growing, growing. He _hates_ the water, hates how it feels, hates it’s coolness, it’s frigid touch against his inner heat.

But he doesn’t hate it. It is at once refreshing and soothing, bringing him back to himself enough to realize that the boundary between him and BOB is growing thinner, that the drug cocktail is wearing off and soon he’ll be banished again, banished away to the Waiting Room, to endless halls with terror chasing him from behind every curtain, and loneliness in every room and the empty madness of the cage that holds him within his own mind. The cage that occasionally allows him a glimpse of the world. And _that_ , he knows, has always been the worst sort of torture.

The terror gnaws at him and his eyes widen at the visceral nature of his feelings. Of the sudden mad rush of desires, to lash out at those around him, to warn them away, to wrest away one of their weapons and once he’s forced them to leave, put an end to it all. But he recalls the last moments of Leland Palmer, and knows, deep in that uncomfortable place inside him, that it wouldn’t be enough. That it would be cowardly. He is disgusted by his own thoughts, by the terror that courses through him, headier than any drug that’s ever mixed with his blood.

 _Fear opens the door_.

Before him, the veil has shifted into their plane of existence and he knows the others can see it now. He feels their presence behind him, and little by little he’s losing his hold, slipping away back beneath the waves of dark endlessness, from that place where he can’t escape on his own.

He whimpers, but isn’t sure if anyone can hear him anyways. Words are lost to him, and only wretched noises are able fall from his lips, but he doesn’t think he’s moving them anymore. A veil of shadow is falling across him, and soon the black emptiness will give way to red _red RED_ pervasive and evil and all-encompassing and he hates the colour with a passion because blood is red and the room is red and he sees –

 

 

– red.

The forest is gone and the wind is gone and the burning rain is gone and there is nothing but the red curtains and the fluorescent light and the chevron patterned floor.

He hears nothing, and does not speak. The handcuffs are gone. He’s clean. No dirt cakes his hands, which are smooth and unwrinkled. No blood drips down his face. He’s wearing the same suit he wore twenty-five years past when life still made a modicum of sense and he was the master of his fate. He takes his first steps, passing through the curtain from the hallway into the first of infinite, identical, and endless rooms.

Before him, a white eyed and grinning entity stands stock still.

Dale doesn’t move. He doesn’t feel anything at all, surprisingly. It is as if he exists in a vacuum, without any air, or even the barest particle of dust or spec of dirt. The nothingness is suffocating, muting all his physical senses. He watches the doppelgänger warily.

The doppelgänger doesn’t move either for what seems to be simultaneously forever and the merest instant.

“,eM htiW klaW eriF”

It smiles, that eerie imitation of humanity, and they stare intently into one another’s eyes, before Dale turns tail, and the screaming, laughing demon is left somewhere behind in the empty, strobing room as Dale disappears into the crimson folds.

 _.kcab kool t’noD_   _.kcab kool t’noD_   _.kcab kool t’noD_

_.srood eht nepo evol dna raeF_

He runs for his life.

An unknown number of rooms later he stops running. He isn’t out of breath, nor, now that he is thinking about it, does Dale believe that he or anything in the place is breathing at all. He simply stops, the feeling of being followed disappearing as though it never had been there in the first place. The room he enters is strange, and wrong, like going backwards in a dream. There is a table, and on the black marbled surface there is a bowl. His bones creak and he feels like old, dusty leather; a frame covered over to look new, but ancient and rickety underneath.

A bowl, not a ring.

“, ot tnaw t’nod I” He says, not sure he even knows what he is responding to. “, ot tnaw t’nod I” Slowly, he turns his head and his eyes, the rest of him remaining in place. In the spot where he gazes, lower to the ground, the Little Man from Another Place appears. He grins toothily at Dale and gestures with his hands. Dale follows the movement to where the bowl is sitting.

“?tsap ti si …ro erutuf ti sI” He looks down again from the table to the Little Man from Another Place. Music fades its way into his ears, a sleazy, crooning number. He looks back to the bowl. It is filled with a strange substance, sticky and yellow. The word for what it is called escapes him, but it gives him an uneasy feeling. He looks back at the Little Man, and decides it is future, and not past.

“,uoy wonk I” Dale states. “,mra eht era uoY”

“,aizobnomraG” The Little Man says after a moment. “,aizobnomraG”

“,gnireffus dna niaP” Dale replies. Looking at the yellow substance, at the _garmonbozia_ , unsettles him.

“,eviG,” The Little Man waves his hand over the bowl, starting to sway. “,ekaT” Again. “,eviG” He rocks back and forth “,ekaT” Then a pause. He looks Dale in the eye. “,deisehporP”

The lights begin to strobe and Dale turns to look over his shoulder. The curtains part, and a foot steps out. His foot. He bolts then, the table disappearing along with the Little Man. He runs and runs and runs through hall and room after identical hall and room.

It seems both an instant and an eternity before the lights stop.  He exits that room and goes into the hall. At the opposite end, by the Venus de Milo, stands another Dweller. A Woman. She stares at him through the milky sclera. He recognizes her, as if from a living dream. She is unmarked except for the dark purple bruise on her cheek.

“,em dellik uoY” She says.

He doesn’t know her name. She looks ready for a party, but is missing an earring.

“,em dellik uoY” She repeats.

 _I didn’t want to,_ he thinks. _I don’t even know who you are._

“,sdnah ruoy no deR” She isn’t blinking, but a smile carves its way onto her face, grotesquely wide.

“,ereh sdneirf on evah uoY”

Frightened, he turns around and goes back through the curtain.

The adjoining room holds the club chairs, a side table, and the lamps. It is empty save for those things, and so he moves on. The next hallway is empty, and the room after that. Again the folds of the curtain draw aside. This time, the Dweller is a man. Tall, wearing a hat.

“,namurT” Dale says, his voice is emotionless despite what he feels inside.

The Dweller turns to face him, and though Dale knows what to expect, he is thrown by the sight of Truman’s doppelgänger.

“?did uoy tahw rebmemer uoy oD” It asks in Truman’s voice. If Dale was able, he would have shivered, would have sobbed. “,sdneirf erew eW”

 _Yes! I remember,_ he longs to say, but he can’t make his mouth move.

“,hturt eht ot esolc ooT” Doppel-Truman says. “,repooC, em delliK .em delliK .reredruM” He points a finger at Dale, steady, like the arm of a mannequin. “ ,em delliK .em delliK .em delliK .em delliK .em delliK .em delliK”

Truman’s white eyes start to run bloody red, until drops overflow. “ ?dneirf ruoy llik uoy did yhW”

“ ,ydobyna llik ton did I” Dale says in response, trying to believe his own words. “ ,ydobyna llik ton did I”

Unable to bear it any longer, Dale returns the way he came, desperate to escape the blank faced twin of his long dead friend, unable to face the truth of what he had done. The recollection comes back to him piece for piece, the last words Harry spoke– _Are you okay Coop?_

_Okay Coop?? Okay COOP? COOOOOOOOOOOP! WHO’S COOP?_

He looks at his hands and he thinks that they are covered in blood for a moment, and then, suddenly, they are clean.

In the next room there is something new.

There is a woman standing in the middle of the room, blood coursing down her neck. On the floor, in a pool of blood, kneels a twin of himself. His skin crawls.

“,ylrebmiK” He says. But when he looks at her face, she wears another woman’s skin. “,yreduA”

“,emas eht dna enO” The woman shadow says, white eyes unblinking. “,emas eht dna enO”

Slowly, they fade away, until only the blood is left, and then that fades too.

The room is empty. He feels something sticky and wet. First, he touches a hand to his stomach, then he looks down. It comes away red. He flings out his hand with force, and the red lands on the chevron floor, splattering like a Rorschach.

He feels a tingling start in his spine. Dale looks over his shoulder again. The Doppelgänger stands stock still, face madly full of laughter, and pale eyes full of flame. It does not move. Neither does Dale; he only turns his head.

There is BOB in front of him, born into being from nothing. The Demon smiles wide, teeth bright and gums shining. Happy to see Dale. He gnashes his teeth, and makes a grotesque sound.

“,gnireffo nA” the entity says.

Behind Dale the Doppelgänger cackles.

“,niaga neppah ton lliw tI” Dale says, voice wavering. “,niaga neppah ton lliw tI”

BOB points. “,gninrub era seye siH”

Dale turns to look, then back to BOB.

“,oot lliw s’ruoY”

Dale puts his hand to his abdomen, and removes from it a blade, shiny and new. Untouched by blood. He opens his grip, and lets it clatter to the floor, a strangely muted sound. His hand stays where it is, perfectly unmoving. All the blood is gone. Both rings are on his hand, the small gold and the green owl. He brings his hand to his chest, grips the green and pulls. It slides off, hard, and then it too he allows to drop to the floor.

“,demialceR” Both he and BOB speak in tandem. “,demialceR”

Dale lifts his foot, and BOB lunges at him, hand like claws, teeth like a shark, the doppelgänger surging towards him from behind,a strange pyramid of force and action.  

Dale’s heel comes down on the ring when BOB’s hands and the doppelgänger’s are just inches from grasping him . In a splitting crack like lightning, the ring explodes into aventurine dust and disperses across the floor, shards of gold and stones of green.

BOB screams in agony.

Dale turns to face to corner of the room, where a gap is growing in the curtains. On the other side of him his Doppelgänger is burning, flaking away into ash, laughing in agony forever, and BOB is still screaming, screaming, screaming like a teapot left on the flame too long as the shadows of smoke crawl up his legs, his torso, engulfing his head and face and hair.

Dale walks towards the gap in the curtains. From behind, BOB rasps out one final rhyme.

“, EM HTIW KLAW ERIF ,tsap s’erutuf fo ssenkrad eht hguorht, ees ot degnol naicigaM eht, sdlrow owt neewteb tuo ecnahc enO .esiw dna elbirret htob sgniht dnatsrednu ot sthgil deliver dnoyeb ylf ot ,seye detihw s’dlihcnooM eht nihtiw dnuof eh ecnalg lataf A .ewa ni dleh secalp ot ,dne s’dlrow owt dnoyeb yaw a ,was eh thguoht naicigaM eht, lleh fo htoum eht esolc dna nepO”

Dale felt his soul shiver as he stepped through the curtain and the roaring sound of the wind and the flame faded away into nothingness as the curtains closed behind him one last time.

^O^

_Open and close the mouth of hell, the Magician thought he saw, a way beyond two world’s end, to places held in awe. A fatal glance he found within the Moonchild’s whited eyes, to fly beyond reviled lights to understand things both terrible and wise. One chance out between two worlds, the Magician longed to see, through the darkness of future’s past, FIRE WALK WITH ME._

^O^

When he opens his eyes, he sees a blanket of black velvet, embroidered with pinpricks of golden light, and a beautiful, gleaming, silver orb that is framed by tall, strong, green conifers, sentinels of the forest and of time. He sighs, like the weight of his body is leaving him, and sits up. It is like waking up to a new day, though the night remains. It is still in the woods; there is no wind, not even a gentle breeze. He stands, still looking up at the infinite beauty of the night sky as the stars bright eyes wink at him. Peace rises in his heart, so precious it’s almost sad.

Rain starts to fall, gentle and enduring. It courses down his face, down his eyes and cheeks. He raises his arms and spins slowly, blinking away drops in wonder at how good it feels, like he’s outdoors for the first time in his whole life, and is finally experiencing the beauty of it all. He’s drenched in the water, in the feeling. The feeling of newness and of the phenomenal splendor of nature, pure and impossible. He feels free, free of every confine he’s ever endured. True freedom unlike anything he’d ever before conceptualized. It is as though the rain passes through him now, rather than over him. He opens his mouth, and breathes a laugh – more a movement than a sound, and spins again.

He lowers his head and out of the corner of his eye, he sees a woman. She is young, and beautiful, and familiar in a way that he can’t describe, like the memory of a smell or a taste, and a song combined to create the image of a moment, immortalized forever, emblazoned on his memory so that with any one or two of those things, she could spring from the dusty shelves of his mind into being, as she has in that moment.

She is smiling widely and holds out a hand to him, in invitation, in welcome and he feels something deep within him, within his heart, like a pain, like an exquisite agony. He knows instinctively that it is a healing pain, a good pain. A sweet, relieving pain. Tears cascade down his face, over his lips, mixing with the rain. Purifying. The salt of them doesn’t even burn. After a moment, without thinking about it, he’s made a decision. The only decision, he knows, somehow. He walks towards her, slow, but weightless, and reaches out his arm to meet hers, fingers only inches away. She is crying too, through her smile, through the shining joy in her eyes, that reminds him of something that he can’t recall the word for. Something unconditional and reverent and _powerful._ All around him the light is growing, glowing with a pure, ethereal shine and he hasn’t know such a feeling ever in the expanse of his memory, like every worry or fear or pain is being lifted, that every damnéd action his hands have ever wrought are being scrubbed away, his skin new and fresh and clean, as though it is removing from him the memory of every horror past. The light bathes him in its softness, engulfs him, mists around his figure.

The woman is so near to him now. Their fingertips only a hair's breadth away and then they touch, and then their hands slide together. And though they are barely touching, when she starts to walk backwards, she pulls him with her, like she is the center of his gravity. He follows without question, easy as though he is gliding, not walking.

There is no sound in these moments, no crush of grass beneath his footsteps, no sound of wildlife. There is only the nothing in which he exists, and the knowledge that he _is_ and that she _is,_ and that together, they exist. That, somewhere in the nowhere, he _exists_.

The light is so bright he can barely see her, shining around her like a halo, making her soft hair glow. And then, he lets go and it is the easiest thing he has ever done, like an exhale. He take another step, and follows.

* * *

“Coop?” Albert had his fingers pressed to the prone man’s neck. He was lying sprawled on his back, arms askew. “Cooper? Cooper!” Albert slapped the man’s face halfheartedly.

“Enough, Albert!” Audrey’s voice cut through the sound of Albert’s pleas. “He’s gone,” Her voice shook. “He’s gone,”

Albert sat back roughly, sinking into the dirt. “My god. My god,” Like a mantra, he spoke, the shock of the moment hitting him fully.

“Enough, Albert! Enough!” She half screamed, half sobbed.

Hawk, until then, had been silent. “It’s a mercy. He’s free, now,” And then, he started to sing, something native, like a requiem.

Audrey listened dazed, looking around in only half awareness while Albert wept quietly. The rain started to fall, a good rain, a strong, abiding rain. A rain from which things grew. Resigning herself to the truth, Audrey swallowed the agonizing sob that was building within her. As she wiped away a stray tear, she caught a glimpse, like a shadow. She went rigid, and both men noticed, but she was silent, and so, suddenly were they, their attention riveted to where Audrey gazed.

Cooper’s body lay still, exactly the way he had appeared, but, just beyond, near a clearing in the firs, they could see the shadow, like a semitransparent image being projected out of nowhere. Albert’s jaw dropped, and Hawk held his breath.

It was Cooper. He was walking towards something, his arm outstretched, smiling like he’d just seen the most beautiful thing in the world staring back at him, and as he moved, slowly, inch by inch, he faded away into the darkness around him. As a vision from a dream.

The rain stopped in the same instant and an impossibly absolute hush fell in the forest. They stayed there like that, sitting next to his cooling body, and watching the place where they had seen him disappear into the ether until the sun’s warming rays began to peek through the trees, bringing with it the day and it was clear that the end had finally come.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_No hipster staring at the long darkness could musically stop the longing_

_For that mouth of love and the sweetness of the fruit of it_

_Flying past the eyes of tormented men who climb the steps of bars_

_And lounges in the early morning past school crossing guards_

_And birds pulling insects from the sky_

_And fish swimming through reflections of the moon and Venus_

_Floating together_

_In the heavens beyond clouds and rain and reverberations_

_Of thunder within the walls of dark rooms_

 

_Somewhere in the Nowhere_

_I saw you reaching out_

_Through the Stars_

_Falling_

_Dark river flowing Nowhere_

_I was Nowhere without you_

 

_Where screams of fights and crying come out windows through the streets where the girls walk and_

_Pose so that they can be seen and wanted_

_As others slept with dreams of flesh and hands probing through windows of views of falling to formation_

_Like cities filled with places where people ate alone at tables in the back near the restrooms pouring_

_Out the stench of rage and sorrow from those who walk this earth unaware that Heaven is in the fixing_

_Of the mistake_

 

_Like clowns leaping skyward on thoughts which spring to the illusion of happy crowds applauding_

_And standing with arms raised high to wires carrying those who dare to fall into unknown worlds_

_Where no rules apply and people cut their wrists and watch as red streams arc up into the realization_

_That the show is over_

 

_Somewhere in the Nowhere_

_I saw you reaching out_

_Through the Stars_

_Falling_

_Dark river flowing Nowhere_

_I was Nowhere without you_

 

_Somewhere in the Nowhere_

_Somewhere in the Nowhere_

_Somewhere in the Nowhere_

_Somewhere in the Nowhere_

 

~David Lynch, Chrysta Bell, Dean Hurley

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to @Lynzee005 for her beta reading and her insights and her drive to drive me to finish this novella. We made a pact and we're both going to fulfill it and what we have accomplished in this time has been amazing. Thank you. Thanks also to the ladies at "There Will Be Drinking" podcast for promoting this story.
> 
> Thanks to David Lynch and Mark Frost for continuing to create and be amazing. Only 1 Day, 11 Hours, 31 minutes, and 38 seconds left to go until the Return.
> 
> Spoilers for those concerned - yes, I killed Dale.


End file.
